LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 




UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS 



FOR THE 



Pew and Pulpit of Methodism, 



IN 



EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-FOUR. 



it. S. FOSTER, 

One of the Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 




PHILLIPS HUNT. 

CINCINNA TI: 
CRANSTON &> STOWE. 
1884. 




Copyright 1884, by 

philijips cfc xacxjisra?, 

New York. 



PREFACE. 



In 1866 I was invited to preach a Centennial Sermon before 
the New York Conference. After its delivery the Confer- 
ence, by a unanimous vote, solicited its publication. But, 
being asked to repeat it several times, I withheld its publi- 
cation until the time passed. The first part of this little 
volume is the substance of that sermon, with some additions. 
The second and third parts are the substance of addresses 
delivered to the several Conferences I held in September and 
October of 1SS3, and to the Lay Electoral Conferences meet- 
ing at the same time. These were also solicited for publica- 
tion by the several bodies to whom they were addressed. I 
have thought that perhaps I ought not to disregard the 
request, and, on re-examination, have come to feel that pos- 
sibly at this particular time the words, while not in any 
respect remarkable, might do some good beyond the circle 
of those who heard them. This, if any is necessary, is my 
apology for sending forth this little brochure. My brethren 
of the ministry, who well know the heart from which it 
emanates, will not find fault with the liberty taken in ad- 
dressing them thus more publicly, or with the great plain- 
ness of speech used, as the publication is made in response 
to the request of several hundreds of themselves. I indulge 
the hope that the reading will be profitable, possibly, long 



4 



PREFACE. 



after the tongue which first uttered the words has been 
silenced by death, and far beyond the circle of those who 
heard them. 

My lay brethren, also, I believe, will not think me im- 
modest in addressing them in this manner, nor will they be 
offended with the suggestions and advices offered. Many, I 
am quite sure, will be pleased to have in a permanent form 
the words which met with their approval at the time of their 
delivery. I send forth this triple message with unaffected 
humility, and with the earnest prayer that the good God 
will make it a blessing to our dear Methodism. 

E. S. Fostee. 



INTRODUCTION, 



The title of this book, while in itself somewhat blind, suffi- 
ciently indicates to the Methodist fraternity its general char- 
acter and intent. We have come to the closing hours of the 
first hundred years of our denominational history. Natur- 
ally enough the occasion becomes one of special interest to 
Methodist peoples throughout the world. Crises points, 
epochal periods, inevitably start emotion and reflection. In 
the brief life of a man a year is significant, and the anni- 
versary becomes a pivotal point. Great organic movements 
of society, civic or religious, which carry over ages, and 
along the lines of generations, fix their commemorative 
periods by centuries. Nature counts her epochal points by 
millenniads. 

This year is our centennial. Episcopal Methodism, the 
largest division of the Methodist family, closes its first hun- 
dred years. Other American branches have a certain rela- 
tion of kinship to it. The Methodist Episcopal Church, 
South, which dates its origin as such from 1845, when it 
became a separate branch with co-ordinate claims to be of 
the same root with ourselves, will observe this year in com- 
mon with us, as its proper centennial epoch. We cordially 
welcome them to the fellowship of our rejoicing as brothers 
beloved, and joint heirs with us to all the hereditaments of 
our common honorable origin. Other branches, originating 
at different periods and from divers causes, will also join 
with us; and, for the time being, overlooking grounds of 
separation and points of difference, while recounting the 



0 



INTRODUCTION. 



family history with pride and love, will revive the ancient 
bond of affection and brotherly sympathy. 

What a year it might have been if, forgetting the causes 
which severed us, and the slight differences which keej3 us 
asunder, this centenary year might have been made mem- 
orable among all Christian people as the period of a re- 
union which should last forever, honorable to our family 
name, and promotive of welfare over all the estate of 
Christendom ! 

Churches do not divide without cause, and perhaps never 
without what, at the time, seems adequate cause, from the 
stand-point of a religious conscience. Doubtless the real 
root cause is often mere human weakness, if not something 
even worse than that. Alas ! it is found to be easier to 
divide than to heal the wound which the wrenched limb 
carries and which the marred trunk feels, and so both the 
suffering parts must go on suffering to the end. Methodism 
would be a more beautiful and shapely tree, and great, like 
one of the Nevada monarchs, if all the branches could adorn 
a single trunk ; but since it cannot be, we must comfort our- 
selves with the thought that possibly somehow it is best as 
it is. We confess to a personal regret at giving up the 
hope of reunion in our time, or, for all that we can see, 
at any time. For ourselves we have neither bitter recol- 
lections nor unbrotherly feelings, but an open hand and a 
loving heart for all who bear the family name. The roof- 
tree is broad enough for us all, while we gather beneath 
its generous boughs for a year of honest congratulations and 
sincere God-speeds. So we will, and our Christian neigh- 
bors will, wave us friendly signals of sympathetic joy and 
benediction. 



THE FIRST HUNDRED YEARS 

OF 

EPISCOPAL METHODISM. 



And now 1 say unto you, Refrain from thess men, a%d let them alone: for if 
this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought: but if it be of God, 
ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply ye be found even to fight against God. 

—Acts v, 38, 39. 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



THE FIRST HUNDRED YEARS OF EPISCOPAL METHODISM. 

An intelligent survey of the past of human history reveals, 
in dim and uncertain outline, beginning with the utmost 
range of vision, an ever-progressive movement of the race 
toward something better — some indefinite good, which, amid 
all failure and disappointment, has continued to lure it on. 
Tailing to reach the goal, it has still pressed toward it, and, 
undaunted to-clay, it yet has its eye steadily fixed on the 
future, and with unabated zeal and hope continues the ad- 
vance. The movement has been, for long intervals, painfully 
slow and tortuous ; now perceptibly advancing, now deflecting, 
now receding, but with occasional leaps of marked and rapid 
progress. It is not possible, in a brief view of the lapse of 
thousands of years, to obtain an exact chart, or determine the 
precise causes of the eddies, doldrums, or sudden and swift 
rush of the tides here and yonder. Obscurity rests thick 
and dark over the middle and remote rims of the retrospect ; 
but one thing is perfectly clear, that in all those ages, near 
and remote, there has been a continuous play of great human 
and divine forces, and, though with intermittent energy and 
often blind endeavor, there has been some continuous prog- 
ress. The generations have come and gone, each increasing 
in volume, each pushing and pulling at the great problem, 
and each failing of the solution, but each adding something. 
Underneath that thick covering of oblivion lie millions of 



10 



C EX TEX A R Y THO UGHTS. 



millions of unmarked graves : nations whose names even 
have perished — armies whose victories and defeats have no 
historians — workers who have toiled and left no sign — stu- 
dents and prophets who died with half -discerned truths and 
unfinished investigations : the wave has rolled over them all, 
hut they did not live in vain. They, building or tearing 
down, were, in one way or another, pushing the race upward 
toward the dawn. 

We come to-day to speak of one of those mighty move- 
ments which, breaking out suddenly, as a spring bursting from 
the desert, made and is making deep and lasting impression 
on the face of human society, and in some respects changing 
the course of the ages, as but two other moral cataclysms 
have done within recorded time. There, have been great 
political upheavals, great social revolutions, great changes in 
the physical condition of peoples, great struggles in which 
nations have been born and perished, great nascent epochs 
in which new forms of civilization have been evolved, but 
there have been but two or three great moral movements 
— epochal periods within the records of history. The retro- 
spect presents a scene of scarcely intermitted activity — peo- 
ples rushing to and fro over the earth's surface, building 
cities, founding kingdoms, carrying on conquests, but mak- 
ing but little perceptible moral advance. The attrition de- 
veloped genius — there were mental epochs ; but mainly the 
movement has been that of furious beasts aspiring after 
dominion — mass hurling itself against mass for conquest 
and spoils. Every page of history is marked with blood 
and fire and destruction. If the slaughtered millions could 
suddenly return to life they would double the present popu- 
lation of the globe ; if the cities and hamlets burned could 
appear at once in flames the world would be in conflagration ; 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



11 



the marching of armies and the shock of battles, if they 
could all be restored and set in array, would shake the globe. 
A furious beast roaring after prey has man been to his fel- 
low-man. The retrospect is frightful, and yet from the 
beginning there has been the hope of something better, and 
a misguided endeavor after it. Prophets appear here and 
there, and moral reformers — Pagan, Jewish, Christian — who 
sought to turn the minds of men to righteousness ; but only 
two or three have left their individual impress permanent, 
wide, and deep on the ages — pre-eminently, Paul, Luther, 
Calvin, Wesley. 

A century and nearly a half has now elapsed since Wesley 
appeared as a reformer. In 1739 * his work commenced in 
one of the cloisters of Oxford. Why, then, it may be asked, 
do we celebrate this as the centennial anniversary of Meth- 
odism ? We do not. In 1766 Methodism was started in 
America, ten years before our national birth. It had already 
existed in England for nearly thirty years. 

We celebrate to-day the centennial of our own Church 
life as a distinct ecclesiastical organization. Up to 1781 we 
had no proper Church, status, though Methodism had existed 
for eighteen years, and had become extensively known, and 
a power in America. The same convulsion which made us 
a nation made us a Church. It would consume time which 
I need for another object were I to recite history presuma- 
bly familiar to all my hearers, and, if not, which you can find 
in the histories which are in your reach, and which at this 
particular time every Methodist should possess and re- 
read, f 

* Note A. 

f Let every Methodist family put in its book-case Stevens's " History of 
Methodism." 



12 



GENTENAR Y THO UG HTS. 



For the same reason I shall not make further mention of 
the name of Mr. Wesley than simply to recognize him as that 
wonderful man who, under God, was the founder of Meth- 
odism, and the fountain-head of that great spiritual quicken- 
ing of which it is a small part of the concrete expression. 
For an account of his life and character, his immense labors, 
his apostolic zeal, his transcendent organizing power and ad- 
ministrative wisdom and energy, his marvelous literary labor, 
and all the great qualities which cluster in his character as 
an evangelist and religious reformer, I must refer you to 
the historians. The tardy justice denied him during his 
life is now amply done him by the entire Christian world, 
and he is awarded his proper place, as, if not primus inter 
pares, at least equal to any of the great names that have 
adorned Christian history. ^sTot understood by his times, he 
has come to be comprehended by posterity. But it is of 
Methodism, not Mr. "Wesley, that we speak — the magnificent 
monument his sanctified genius reared, not himself. Insti- 
tutions are more, after all, than the men that rear them. 
Christianity is more than Paul ; Methodism is more and 
greater than Wesley. 

For the same reason that we omit any special reference to 
Mr. Wesley, we do not mention the labors of Mr. Asbury, 
or any of the prominent men from his day to ours, some of 
whom deserve to rank with the greatest heroes. Head the 
story, as you will find it in the charming pages of Dr. Abel 
Stevens's " History of Methodism." Written in a style of 
rare elegance, it reads like a romance, with the advantage of 
being history. 

For the same reason still, I make no mention of the perse- 
cutions our fathers were called to suffer, or the fierce and 
bitter opposition they encountered in all parts of the land 



CENTENAR Y THO UGHTS. 



13 



from the dominant clergy and the Churches already preoc- 
cupying the ground. Those days are past, and we can well 
afford to forget them, albeit, while they lasted, they were 
bitter enough to try men's souls. 

Per saltum, clearing all intervening and irrelevant mat- 
ters, however interesting, we come at once to our theme — 
the Philosophy of Methodism, or a view of what it has ac- 
complished and the explanation. 

The treatment we propose will bring under review the 
following points, and in the order named : the present status 
of Methodism ; the causes of its marvelous development ; its 
further work ; its wants ; its prospects ; its claim to the good- 
will of other Christian bodies, and to the continued support 
and loyalty of its own sons and daughters. 

Each Christian Church has a life of its own, and interests and 
demands peculiar to itself, which make it right, without laying 
itself open to the charge of narrowness, that at stated periods 
or some marked epoch it should recount its family history 
and traditions, and renew its loyalty and allegiance, and 
devise measures of love and gratitude for its greater expan- 
sion and enlarged usefulness. Nor should such celebrations 
give offense to other members of the great one household, 
but should be rather an occasion of kindly feeling and frater- 
nal expression, for what is the weal of one is the weal of all, 
and the joy of one should be the common joy of the whole 
brotherhood of Christians. While during this centennial 
year we shall think and talk more about ourselves than 
would seem modest under ordinary circumstances, and busy 
ourselves more than usual about our own affairs, our sister 
Churches will rather commend than condemn us, and I be- 
lieve that any enthusiasm we may enkindle for the greater 
success of our own cause will but sweeten and strengthen 



14 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



the bond of sympathy. So let ns have a first centennial 
celebration worthy of our name and history, and let all our 
Christian relations rejoice with us. 

Returning to the line of discussion we have named, we 
come to consider, as our first point, the present status of 
Methodism, or, more widely yet, what has been wrought by 
Methodism up to date — the grand result of the century's 
forth-putting. 

The statement, to be complete, would require us to include 
the results in both hemispheres — the Methodism of the Old 
World and of the New in all their branches, for they are all 
the growth of the same seed ; more yet, to be perfectly com- 
plete, it would be requisite to give an accurate estimate of 
its influence on other Churches and moral agencies existing 
when it appeared, as well as on such as have arisen outside of 
itself by means of it : to trace its quickening and molding 
power on the experience and life and thought and the the- 
ology and evangelizing spirit and methods of the whole 
Christian commonwealth ; its transforming influence over 
the pulpit, the press, and the altar of evangelical and un- 
evangelical Christendom ; together with its impression on 
the secular and civic institutions and economics of the civ- 
ilized world. That it has been a powerful agency in all 
these directions for the last hundred years no one can dis- 
pute. If it were possible to adequately separate and esti- 
mate these external effects, it might appear that by far the 
greatest work Methodism has wrought has been in lines 
wholly outside of its own pale — the indirect greater than the 
direct results. For myself I have no doubt upon that point. 
If, as a distinct organization, it should now at once disap- 
pear or become absorbed, these influences, which have per- 
manently incorporated themselves into the civil and religious 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



15 



consciousness of the race and structure of society, would 
make it still, though undiscerned, one of the most tremen- 
dous factors -in the world's life. 

It has been a characteristic of Methodism that, though a 
pronounced, it has never been a destructive, agency, but, on 
the contrary, conservative and constructive. Much as it was 
opposed in its early history by the older Churches, it was 
invariably helpful to them. The fires that had gone out on 
many of their altars were kindled afresh from hers. Shak- 
ing off their grave-clothes, they came forth into new life 
under the inspiration of her teaching and example. 
Churches that had lost all signs of spiritual power, thus 
quickened, have come to be full of evangelizing energy and 
power. Reinvested, in part consciously, but whether con- 
sciously or not, by her contact and influence, they to-day 
rival, and in some cases surpass, her zeal. Adopting her 
methods, and working them with even greater vigor, they 
have come to equal or even distance her in revivalistic and 
soul-saving work. That this new awakening of an almost 
dormant energy is a product of her enthusiasm is now cor- 
dially and gratefully acknowledged by the Churches them- 
selves. Though Methodism has steadily and zealously la- 
bored to build up a great church-power, and has sometimes 
been put on the defensive, it has always rejoiced in the 
prosperity of other religious bodies, and it is now her joy 
that she is not alone in zeal and aggressiveness, that others 
are even threatening to take her laurels. 

But passing by these indirect results at home and in the 
mission fields, and confining our statement to what has 
grown upon the sheer root and stem of Methodism itself, 
the showing will be wonderful enough. These discrim- 
inated and organized results are what we shall proceed to 



16 



CEXTEXARY THOUGHTS. 



state. Still further, we must limit ourselves to the visible 
fruits existing in the organism to-day. Justice would re- 
quire that some mention should be made of the garnered 
fruits — the three generations of glorified trophies — the mill- 
ions born to a celestial life at her altars, who, after witness- 
ing upon earth, have been translated to the skies. There is 
reason to believe that that branch of Methodism greatly 
exceeds this. She has a larger family in heaven than on 
earth, and these belong to her, and will forever be numbered 
as her children ; in any statement of the work she has done 
their salvation must be included as a chief element. If she 
should be blotted out from the earth to-day she would still 
exist forever in heaven, and her praises would continue to 
be sung by many millions of her happy children through all 
eternity, for, though these earthly badges of separation are 
unknown as such among the glorified, yet there are none 
among them who will ever forget their earthly name or 
the holy altars where their heavenly life was enkindled. 
Methodism is a word that will have a charmed sound, and 
will be reverently spoken long after the earth itself has been 
burned up. 

But reserving for our present statement simply what now 
exists, we shall find enough to endanger that humility with- 
out which we are nothing. After a brief general statement 
of Methodism as a whole, including all branches in all parts 
of the world, we must still further limit ourselves to our 
own branch and its offshoots, whose anniversary we cele- 
brate. 

Commencing amid the retreats of Oxford, in one of the 
college cloisters, in the earnest aspirations after personal 
holiness enkindled in the breasts of the two Wesleys, White- 
field, and one or two other students, Methodism soon took 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



17 



feet and went abroad into the great vulgar world to the 
people. Though college born, it was not college bound. 
By an instinct which has continued throughout its history, 
and in all its forms, it betook itself to the masses. Drifting 
hither and thither, with no one to care for their souls, their 
neglected condition awakened the sympathy of these young- 
evangelists and opened the door for their first labors. A 
strange success began immediately to attend them. The 
movement assumed form and consistency, and widened and 
deepened beyond all expectation. They did not know what 
a power was born among men, what proportions it was soon 
to assume ! By rapid and startling evolutions it surprised 
neighboring towns and cities and remote mining districts. 
Beticent at first and timid, it soon became bold and aggress- 
ive. Its words and methods at once aroused attention and 
opposition. In a brief time it multiplied and organized its 
agents, and with almost incredible quickness extended it- 
self throughout the isles of Britain, striking its roots deeply 
in the rich soils of England, the fens and bogs of Ireland, 
the gardens and glades of Wales, even gaining a hold in the 
rocky fastnesses of Scotland. Before the generation passed 
away, throughout Britain, alongside of the Anglican pile, the 
Scotch kirk, and the Komish cathedral, arose the unpretend- 
ing Wesleyan chapel, and the United Kingdom was alive 
with the multitudes of the new sect. 

The islands were too small. Overflowing their narrow 
boundaries, Methodism spread abroad into other countries, 
taking fast hold of distant provinces and far-off lands of the 
globe. Almost as by miracle, it was soon planted in France, 
Germany, India, Australia, and within the century in Den- 
mark, Norway, Sweden, Italy, and in the eastern and western 

isles of the sea, finding its largest home, where it was to win 
2 



18 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



its greatest victories and rear its proudest monument, in the 
colonies and new States of the New World. 

So rapid and wonderful had been the diffusion of its 
agency that in less than a hundred years it had girdled the 
globe, and become one of the most compact, numerous, and 
powerful sects that has existed in the world. To-day it may 
be truthfully said of it, as of the empire that gave it birth, 
that the sun never sets upon its dominions. It has taken 
root in all the lands, and won converts from among all the 
peoples of the earth. 

But we have to do at present more especially with its great 
American branch. The Wesleyan body is a great and pow- 
erful factor in the British kingdom, and in all parts of the 
empire, but American Methodism has outgrown the parent 
stock.* It is not strangq that it should be so. Here it 
found a larger and less preoccupied field. The peculiar con- 
dition of our new and rapidly growing country furnished a 
theater to which its methods and spirit were exactly adapted. 
It is questionable whether other and older organisms already 
existing, with their slow and cumbrous methods, could have 
preserved our long and shifting frontier from lapsing into 
semi-barbarism. Methodism appeared at precisely the right 
moment, and, with its peculiar experience and evangelizing 
methods and theology, furnished the needed and perfectly- 
adapted instrument. The tabernacle for the wilderness was 
not more timely. The hand of God was never more plainly 
discernible. 

It is a little more than a hundred years since a stray seed, 
borne across the sea, drifted through the gates of New York 
Bay, and lodged on the metamorphic rock of Manhattan 
Island. It was not a thrifty seed : most of its life had been 

* Stevens's " History," vol. i, p. 23. 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



19 



washed out by the waves which bore it from a distant shore. 
Five years it had lain above ground, until it seemed hopelessly 
dead. Who could have guessed the fecundity of that seed ? 

An acorn from the freighted boughs of some great oak 
goes rattling along the rocks and rifts until finally it hides 
itself amid the decaying debris of former vegetation ; a 
squirrel or idle breeze toying among the branches shook it 
down, or of very ripeness it fell. A hundred years pass and 
the acorn is an oak, in turn propagating forests like itself. 
It is so in the moral realm. A seed-truth, shaken from in- 
visible wings, drifting about in mid-heaven, lodges ultimately 
in some great human consciousness ; a century hence it shall 
be a bread-bearing tree for the nations. 

That seed of Methodism, how it has shot its roots down- 
ward in the American soil ! how, full of vitality, they have 
run into the rich earth, hurrying, with greed of life, along 
the shores of the rivers, out into the fat valleys, over the wide 
savannas, across the mountains and stretches of the wilderness, 
from eastern to western shores of ocean, until the whole land 
has become full of the matted roots and shapely branches ! 
The seed has grown, not a tree but a forest— a banyan-tree, 
with a thousand trunks and million branches, embowering 
the continent, its top filling half the sky, and its shade cov- 
ering the land from the snows of Hudson's Bay to the coral 
coasts of Florida, and from sea to sea! By what method 
shall I best convey an idea of this wonderful growth ? 

Just for a moment let us look at statistics. They do not 
convey the whole truth, and yet they will help us. Geo- 
graphically, American Methodism, in some form, is repre- 
sented in all quarters of the globe— Asia, Africa, Europe, 
and the Americas, and is found in nearly all the nationalities 
of the earth — in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, 



20 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



Italy, Bulgaria, India, China, Japan, Liberia, the Argentine 
Republic, Chili, Bolivia, Mexico, and in all the provinces, 
states, and territories of North America. Her missionaries 
and native preachers are evangelizing in all the principal 
languages and dialects of the race : their voices are heard in 
the jungles of Africa, amid the snow-drifts of the Mountains 
of the Moon, and almost wherever man is found. 

For convenience we present the figures of her numerical 
strength, as to communicants, ministers, members, and chapels: 

Members. Ministers. Chapels. 
Methodist Episcopal Church 1,800,000 12,096 28,000 

Methodist Episcopal Church, South 900,000 4,000 for all 

American Meth. Episcopal Church . 38*7,000 1,800 Meth- 

Zion Methodist Episcopal Church. . 300,000 1,800 odism, 

Protestant Methodist Church 135,000 - 1,400 

True Wesleyans 17,000 400 

Other branches 155,000 1,200 

Canadian branches and provinces. . 690,000 1,600 

Total 4,384,000 24,296 

It will aid to a fair estimate of this result if for a moment 
we look at a comparison with similar results during the same 
period. In 1TT6 it appears that there were existing in the 
United States : 

Churches. Ministers. Prob. Members. 

Congregational 700 575 70,000 

Protestant Episcopal 300 250 10,000 

Baptist 380 350 80,000 

Presbyterian 140 300 30,000 

Lutheran 60 25 8,000 

Dutch Reformed 60 25 7,000 

German Reformed 60 25 , 6,000 

Associate Reformed 20 13 2,000 

Moravian 8 12 1,000 

Methodist 34 24 4,900 * 

* In note B will be found further statistics. 



C EX TEN A R Y THO UGHTS. 



21 



This, so far as is known, was the religious status of the 
colonies in 1776. The overshadowing bodies were, Congre- 
gationalists first, Baptists second, Presbyterians third, Prot- 
estant Episcopalians fourth. 

The present status in the United States of the same 
bodies is : 





Churches. 


Ministers. 


Members. 




39,000 


23,000 


3,900,000 




29,000 


18,000 


2,500,000 




11,500 


8,600 


940,000 




3,800 


3,700 


384,000 


Protestant Episcopal . 


3,000 


3,400 


350,000 




5,500 


3,200 


950,000 




16,000 


9,000 


1,000,000 



Thus it appears that Methodism in one hundred years has 
passed from nearly the least to one and a half times the size 
of the then largest body, to four times that of the next 
largest, to nine times the next largest, to ten times the next 
largest, and to more than one third of the whole. 

While giving statistics, it may be as well to add some 
with respect to material development, especially with rela- 
tion to church accommodation, educational appliances, peri- 
odical and other publications — what might be called in 
general, church equipment. These are integral to church 
development. Provisions for converts, for their housing 
and training, are as much a part of a church's life and work 
as conversions are. One hundred years ago Methodism had 
essentially no church buildings of any kind — thirty all told: 
She now has not less than 30,000. She had no educational 
establishments : she now has 52 colleges, valued at 
$11,050,000, to say nothing of her 100 seminaries of learn- 
ing for higher education of youth, which would add some 
millions to the estimate. The Baptists have 46 colleges, val- 



22 



CENTEX ARY THOUGHTS. 



ued at 810,300,000. The Congregationalists have 28, valued 
at $9,000,000. The Protestant Episcopalians have 12, val- 
ued at §8,700,000 ; Presbyterians, 41, valued at $7,000,000 ; 
Lutherans, 17, valued at $1,400,000; Cumberland Presby- 
terians, 4, valued at $1,300,000. Thus it appears that our 
denominational educational equipment places us again at the 
head. The same fact holds as to the number of students in 
regular attendance on schools of higher learning. Receipts 
from all sources of publication arrangements from the be- 
ginning : Methodist Book Concern, $35,000,000 ; American 
Bible Society, $20,000,000; American Tract Society, New 
York, $18,000,000 ; Baptist Publishing Board, $6,400,000 ; 
American Sunday-School Union, $9,200,000; Presbyterian, 
New and Old School, $5,300,000; Congregational Board, 
$3,100,000. Thus it appears that we have provided more 
fully religious publications than any of our sister Churches. 
The showing would make it further appear, if we had the 
time, that we publish a larger number of periodicals— week- 
ly and monthly — and circulate them more widely than any 
other denomination. The same will hold good of moneys 
expended in mission work, but not per member; here the 
comparison is against us. These statistics are presented not 
in a boastful spirit, nor as matter of self-glorification, but 
simply to show what Methodism has done in a hundred 
years, and, by comparison, to enable us to form a proper 
estimate of her work. If it is not all that ought to be, still 
it is not despicable, nor such as to cause us to hang our 
heads with shame in the presence of our brethren. 

To enable us to estimate the value of these figures we 
must take time to weigh them, and in some way cause the 
mind to see what they represent. Let us analyze the state- 
ment and cause it to pass before us spectacularly. This will 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



23 



aid the imagination. The picture must be in two parts : the 
first represents one hundred and eighteen years ago ; the 
second represents to-day, and shows what has been accom- 
plished. Exert the imagination. Yon perceive a picture 
moving into view. Over the first scene you observe in 
large, bold numerals MDCCLXVI, (1766.) In the fore- 
ground there are two conspicuous figures ; sitting around a 
table in shadow is a company of men, rough-looking and 
poorly clad. The two conspicuous figures are a male and 
female. They are also plainly dressed, and are unmistakably 
of the laboring class. The woman has a hand lifted in an 
admonitory gesture, and her face is aglow with earnestness. 
The listener is evidently cowering under rebuke. You are 
familiar with the picture, and at once recognize the two as 
Philip Embury and Barbara Heck. In those two breasts 
is all there is of Methodism in America in 1766 — they are 
Methodism sole and complete. Fix this distinctly in the 
mind : Philip Embury, Barbara Heck — the people called 
Methodists. In all the colonies there is not another, and of 
these one is backslidden. There has not been a prayer or 
class meeting or sermon. There is no church or place of 
meeting. There are no plans for propagation of any kind. 
Will it die ? It would seem so. 

The first part moves out of view, and now you perceive 
the second part coming into view. You see that it is to-day 
by the bold figures 1884. A hundred and more years have 
intervened. The picture represents nothing of that im- 
portant interval. Three intervening generations have come 
and gone. It is an eventful period. Revolutions have rocked 
the hemisphere. The greatest of the ages has heaved and 
tossed throughout that century of years. Heroes in Church 
and State have lived and acted. Great changes have been 



24 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



wrought. The wilderness has become a garden. Mighty 
States have taken the place of feeble colonies. The great 
republic has become the wonder and admiration of the 
world. Cities of vast commerce have sprung up over the 
land, and along the shores of two oceans. The great war of 
the Revolution has been fought, then another following this, 
the greater war of the Rebellion. Fifty millions of freemen 
have spread over a domain then covered with savages and 
wild beasts. The world has advanced ! It is a new age. 
Again the picture moves : — you observe what seems to be a 
procession. It is a procession of the descendants of Barbara 
Heck. First, they come in pairs, marching two abreast. 
They who first appear are venerable-looking men, some 
black, some white. They have an air of thoughtfulness, 
and are simple in mien and dress. There are about thirty 
of them. They are evidently a guild. Some of them you 
recognize. They are the Bishops of Episcopal Methodism. 
The line now moving into view comes five abreast. You 
observe, they bear parchments. They are of many national- 
ities, English, German, Italian, Dane, Swede, Norwegian, 
Chinese, Japanese, Hindu, Mahratti, Bengalese, Spanish, 
and almost all known dialects : more than twenty thousand 
of them. They are the pastors, secretaries, editors, and pro- 
fessors of Methodism in all lands. Again the picture moves. 
]N"ow there are ten abreast. There are women marching 
with the men. They all wear some kind of a badge. 
They are the officers of Methodism, lay preachers, stewards, 
trustees, class-leaders, sabbath-school superintendents and 
teachers. There are 350,000 of them. Make way ! What 
a crowd is this ! They fill the street from pave to pave. They 
are of all ages and complexions and tongues. They come from 
all walks of life, the lowly and the great. Miles upon miles 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



25 



they crowd the vision. They are the sixteen million Meth- 
odists and adherents of Methodism of the American family. 
It is well to remember that all this vast host is the product 
of this generation. They are what Methodism has done, 
not in a hundred years, (to tell that story we should have to 
call from their graves, or rather from the skies, another host 
greater than this, and swell the procession in all its guilds to 
more than double its present size,) but in a single generation. 
It is not always remembered, that to keep the ranks full 
simply, to say nothing of increase, Methodism must convert 
in thirty years a number equal to her entire communion, to 
fill the places made empty by transfers to the skies. To 
have the full impression of this great movement, greater 
by far than we conceive — for even the people called 
Methodists, much less other people, have no adequate idea 
of what it is— we must endeavor to brin^ into our view the 
present working of this vast army — thirty thousand preach- 
ers, every Lord's day preaching sixty thousand sermons to 
millions of hearers ; a sabbath-school force much larger, mold- 
ing as many millions of youths ; other officers working in 
their appropriate spheres — the whole permeating all lands, 
working in pulpit, and by the press, and in educational 
halls, all to build the age in intelligence and virtue, work- 
ing against vice, against intemperance, against false doc- 
trine, against oppression, against all manner of wrong and 
sin — working to lift humanity toward God ! 

Methodism has never been a proselyting system. These 
are not sheep she has gathered from some other fold. She 
has given much, but received little. She has sent her con- 
verts by thousands into other communions, to be their bright- 
est jewels ; she has borrowed but few in return. It is her 
greatest glory that she has gone to the quarries and wrought 



26 



CENTEXARY THOUGHTS. 



her ornaments and treasures from the rough material. Many 
of the most honored names on her roll of renown she has 
gathered not only from the world, but from the humblest 
walks of life, and many of them from the sinks of vice and 
irreligion. What they are morally, socially, religiously, aye, 
and financially, she has made them. She took them from 
the bogs and morasses, and has set them among the princes 
of the land. 

Nor has she sent her lay converts alone into other folds, 
replenishing their poverty and enriching them with treasures 
not won by their own labor, but she has also given many of 
their pulpits their brightest ornaments. Should some of our 
sister Churches restore to us our own, it would decimate 
their ranks, and send a wail through all their borders. We 
do not ask it, but in reckoning up the trophies of Meth- 
odism we remind them that we have to find them among 
their choicest garlands. Nor do we utter a complaint. 
Their riches, though our gift, does not leave us poor, though 
if given back it would make them poor indeed. If while 
we build our own walls we can build theirs also, we ask but 
one thing in return : that when they reckon their great 
names they remember and confess that they are the gift of 
Methodism to supply a want which they could not supply 
themselves. Let us thank God that, though sometimes they 
run away with our treasures with a taunt, and flourish them 
with pride, God has given to us the honor of such fecundity 
that we can spare what they so much need, and still have 
better than we give, and enough.* 

To make the picture complete, we must add yet two other 
parts. These, again, are. of the same two periods — 1776 
and 1834 They represent the material development of 

* Notes C, D. 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



27 



Methodism, or what we have called the equipment for 
carrying on her work. The first part moves into view. 
As you see, it is a somewhat dilapidated and unsightly build- 
ing. A tumbling stairway leads on the outside to the 
second story. " Sail-loft " is rudely inscribed at the place 
of entrance. Methodism's birthplace stands before you. 
~No one can gainsay that it was a lowly roof-tree. But was 
it not also suitable \ What more was needed for this lowly 
company, without even a name or status. Little did they 
dream, or the passers-by who may have heard their songs, 
of what was being cradled in that humble nest on that 
winter day. There was nothing else, and this was but a 
hired house. The second part of the picture moves into 
view. It comprises the equipments of Methodism in 1884, 
as you see by the date in the margin. First, appro- 
priately, come the churches. There are nearly thirty thou- 
sand of them 7 many of them small and humble, for the wil- 
derness and the frontiers, costing but little, but adequate to 
the wants of those that use them ; many of them rich and 
costly, and not a few magnificent, on principal avenues in 
the great cities, where 'the fashionable and wealthy congre- 
gate ; for the sons and daughters of the humble wor- 
shipers of the sail-loft have become rich and refined. Then 
come the educational piles, some of them ornate and vast, in 
stone and brick, built to endure through generations and 
centuries, and all set in beautiful grounds, the fit homes for 
study and refining culture — a quarter of a thousand of them. 
Then come the great publishing houses, with their freighted 
rooms and powerful presses, turning out books by the mill- 
ion. Surrounding and encompassing all are the million 
homes of our people in all the hamlets and neighborhoods 
of our great land, and in the great towns and cities of all 



28 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



the States ; the homes where Methodist children are born, 
and out of which come some of our best citizens, to do the 
work of advancing civilization. That here, in these four 
pictures, is a wonderful aggregate to be accounted for, every 
candid observer must admit — how wonderful none of us fully 
appreciate ! The present we see in part, but the top reaches 
far beyond our powder of comprehension, into the utmost 
heaven. From small, almost unobservable causes, magnifi- 
cent results often spring, to teach us that we should not 
" despise the day of small things ; " but neither Church nor 
State furnishes a single parallel of such amazing growth 
from insignificant beginnings to magnificent, solid, and en- 
during effects in the same length of time. The early spread 
of Christianity and its triumph over effete paganism, and the 
Reformation under Luther, furnish the only two analogous 
cases, and certainly, all things considered, neither of these 
surpasses it. They were alike great spiritual upheavals 
pressing men and the race onward to God. The first is the 
fountain-head of the others, and so cannot properly come 
into the comparison ; but certainly as between the second 
and third, while the reformation of Luther will, on some 
accounts, take the precedence in the thoughts of men ; for 
purely spiritual results it does not surpass the work started 
by Mr. Wesley — does not equal it. That stands, clean cut, 
in the history of the race as a purely revivalistic move- 
ment, without admixture or adulteration of any kind, as 
the Reformation of the sixteenth century does not. To- 
day it is the sublime fact of an organized spiritual force, 
uniting and interpenetrating millions of souls — a life-force, 
growing and propagating itself. It has cut itself so into 
the religious history of the race, and inwoven itself so into 
the very texture of its consciousness and theological think- 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



29 



ing, that it is impossible it should ever be expunged. What- 
ever may be the future of Methodism, it has an immortal 
past. Poets and historians and orators will never let the 
glory of its first hundred years die. 

It is fitting that I should give the estimate of an impartial ob- 
server : The Rev. Dr. Bellows wrote, in 1866, an appreciative 
estimate of the work accomplished by Methodism, in which 
he says : " Individual churches and preachers may record the 
number of converts made in a year ; but of the entire num- 
ber of converts made by Methodism in this century there are 
no proximate estimates. But millions have been converted 
by it, millions have been awakened from their worldliness, 
started out of their stupor — some from sinful courses — and 
spiritually quickened and strengthened by its offices and 
ministrations. Its missionaries have gone down among the 
poor with their precious messages of j^enitence and hope ; 
they have followed the emigrant into the wilderness, and 
have been the pioneers of civilization, scattering the seeds of 
virtue and enlightenment in waste and desert places ; they 
have done more than can be imagined to restrain, elevate, 
and educate the common j3eople of our land. There are no 
moral census tables to tell, in mathematical figures, the real 
good Methodism has done. The statistics of its work must 
be studied in the altered lives, and the improved manners 
and morals, and the noble aims of the peoj)le influenced by 
it, and the higher life of society in the communities where it 
has flourished. As a religious movement Methodism stands 
before the world justified in its results." 

It is fair that it should be said that Methodism has not 
been a temporizing Church. The vast host of its converts 
have not been won by pandering to their prejudices and 
vices. From the first she has been thorough, outspoken, 



30 



CENTEX AR Y THO UG FITS. 



and uncompromising. There lias never been a moral issue, 
or political issue involving principle, before the people that 
she has not been bold in her allegiance to the right. She 
has invariably taken the highest ground and the front rank. 
No cause of doubtful nature has ever looked for her sup- 
port. From the first she recorded her protest against slavery, 
and incorporated it in her organic law. Her testimony and 
her laws have ever been unequivocal against the theater, the 
dance, and all gaming. Against intemperance she has been 
a burning wrath. No public or private sin has ever escaped 
her scourge. Mere formalism she has unsparingly de- 
nounced. She has demanded a thorough-paced spiritual 
experience, and a consistent and holy life. Her habit in all 
these respects has branded her as extreme, and even Puritan- 
ical, not to say fanatical, and the straitest of the sects. It is 
her glory that intense religiousness, separation from the world, 
and self-denial have always been branded as Methodistic. 

If we seek now for the explanation of the amazing facts 
we have been reciting, it is not probable that we shall find 
perfect agreement ; some will find one solution, some an- 
other. Some would be disposed to find it almost exclusively 
in the supernatural, others are disposed to see in it nothing 
but the natural. The truth, no doubt, lies in the golden 
mean. Much must be ascribed to the divine, much to the 
human, and much to environments. We shall never be able 
to determine the exact ratio of these factors. When God 
is the worker, most directly, in spiritual results, he never 
wholly dispenses with the human, nor does he act in total 
independence of circumstances.* 

* Dr. Stevens says : " In these two facts — the spirit and the practical system 
of Methodism — inheres the whole secret, if secret it may be called, of its peculiar 
power." — Vol. i, p. 31. "It was a revival Church in its spirit, a missionary 
Church in its organization." 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



31 



As we see it, the explanation is found primarily, if not 
chiefly, in the peculiar experiences of the principal human 
agents in the work. The sole single power that made them 
mighty at the first, and worked through them a reproduc- 
tion of itself in the souls of others, was God in them. The 
divine power interpenetrated the human agent and made it 
superhuman, and the word emanating from them was " in 
demonstration and power of the Holy Ghost." The source 
of the whole movement was comprised in an experience 
which infused their words with a peculiar energy. It was 
not the power of a new utterance or new method, merely, 
or, added to those, of a unique human magnetism. The men 
employed were men of unusual genius. Whitefield, especial- 
ly, was transcendent in the gift of eloquence, Wesley * in the 
gift of organization, and Charles Wesley in the gift of 
sacred poetry. The methods were new and exciting. But 
all this would have produced but an ephemeral ripple had 
it not been for that enshrined mystery of the divine power in 
their souls, and hence in their words. 

The power first appeared as a/ppeaseless soul hunger, 
which no husks of theology or empty ceremonials could 
satisfy. It set them to seeking God. It stirred the depths 
of their being. It would not quiet. It revealed sin to 
them. It brought them face to face with eternal law and 
its awful penalties. It pierced them with the arrows of the 
Almighty. With no one to understand or guide them, -they 
were, not days merely, but years, driven and torn by 'the ter- 
rors of the Lord. These were the months of preparation for 
the great work Providence was fitting them for. Its value 
appears in all their after lives. Finally they found God. This 

* Macaulay says of John Wesley, that "his genius for government was not 
inferior to that of Richelieu." — Essays, vol. i, p. 221, third London ed. 



32 



CENTEXAR Y THO UGHTS. 



was the second visitation of power in them. If before they 
could not rest for soul hunger and fear and remorse, now 
they could not rest for soul joy. They must proclaim the 
glad tidings. These messages burned on their lips, and 
burned into the souls of their hearers, and made the hungry 
multitudes eager to hear them again and again. It, of course, 
was a message of wrath, for they had felt the woe of sin. 
It was, of course, a message of mercy, for they had found 
pardon. It was, of course, a message of joy, for their souls 
exulted in God. It was the Law and the Gospel melted into 
one. 

They knew not then the full meaning of the revelation 
which had been made in them ; that they had opened the 
doors of their souls to a power which was to be the source of 
the thousand earthquakes that began immediately to follow, 
and that has continued to rock the world for a hundred 
years. We do not say that there were not Christians before 
and then, plenty of them ; and not a few in the pulpits. 
Charity requires us to believe there were devout and earnest 
men in the Churches of Britain. But this we say : that when 
the souls of these vo-un^ evangelists were touched with the 
name of God's saving love, a spark was emitted which has 
wrapped the world in conflagration ever since. Seized of 
this new power, they became a power, and could neither 
rest themselves nor let others rest. With tearful eyes and 
heaving breasts they told the irrepressible story. The words 
were simple, but they dropped among men like lightning 
from the skies, and so smote them that they fell as dead men 
to the ground. The influence was infectious. Conversions 
followed — soul births into a new life — clear, distinct, exultant. 
It was Pentecost, with tongues of fire come again. The old 
effects followed. Men could not stand before it. Man is 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



33 



sympathetic. Doubtless this will account for much. The 
mysterious influence which seized one soul propagated itself 
in others. It found fuel, corded and hungry of combustion, 
in every human breast. It struck a chord in every awakened 
soul which found an echo in every other. As if some celes- 
tial current had been suddenly, and for the first time, started, 
it drew the half-frightened, sin-sorrowful multitude toward 
God, until they touched his garments and were healed. 

This was Methodism's first power. Its second was an out- 
birth from it, and permeated by it. It consisted of its new 
method of evangelizing and theologizing. 

It has been many times said that Methodism has furnished 
nothing new in theology ; that the world owes to it the dis- 
covery of no new truth ; that it has added nothing to the 
stock of religious ideas ; that, in fact, it nowhere crosses the 
lines of intellect ; that it is a mere wave of feeling, a surface- 
ripple of sentiment, which, running its course, must soon 
subside. This theory is put forth in that notable, and in the 
main candid, work of Isaac Taylor, on " The Problem of Wes- 
leyanism." It is repeated in the essay already referred to of 
Dr. Bellows, also an able, and in the main fair, treatment of 
the same subject. He says : " Methodism was essentially a 
religious movement, and as such was self-limited, both in 
power and duration. It grew out of a necessity. It met a 
want. It performed a mighty and holy work. But this 
work was essentially revi valistic. It dealt with sentiment. Its 
appeals were to the heart, with whatever could awaken its 
fears or its hopes, its penitence or its affection. But it was 
destitute of ideas. It has contributed no thought to the 
intellectual property of the world. It is identified with no 
permanent principles of the philosophy of moral order. ~No 

great truth is necessarily involved in its existence and pledged 
3 



CEXTEXAE Y THO UGHTS. 



to give it perpetuity. However it may have invigorated 
the springs of intellect, the history of intellect nowhere 
crosses its lines. Though essentially connected with certain 
doctrines chosen out of existing beliefs, by £ a law of selec- 
tion ' hard to understand, it is not necessarily restricted to 
them, and would be just as much at home in the Swedenbor- 
gian or the Universalist scheme of theology. But all such 
fluent movements shortly subside if they are not confirmed 
and supported by ideas. For truth is the sign and secret of 
stability : it is the principle of permanence ; and only as a 
body has firm hold upon some truth or principle of rlie 
spiritual order has it the keys of the kingdom and the 
promise of the future/"' * This is a very remarkable state- 
ment, both for its insight and its misconceptions. There is a 
deep and true philosophy in it, but it is misapplied. Its es- 
timate of Methodism is both true and false, and it is the half 
truth which vitiates the conclusion. It is true that it was 
essentially a revivalistic movement ; but it is not true that it 
was simply a feeling. It is not true that it has not a doc- 
trinal basis. It is not true that it did not and does not con- 
nect itself with ideas. It is not true that it is identified 
with no principles of moral order. It is not true that " it has 
contributed no thought to the intellectual property of the 
world." These statements are misjudgments, and do not ac- 
cord with the facts of history. It is true that it added no new 
fundamental article to the common Protestant creed ; that it 
announced no newly discovered doctrine ; that it did not start 

* Something like this is conceded by Dr. Abel Stevens, in his " History of 
Methodism," vol. i, p. 29. The most common charge brought against the 
fathers of Methodism was, that they preached a new and denied the old G-ospel. 
The false doctrine they preached was dilated upon in all the pulpits. Books 
and pamphlets flooded the land against these new doctrines. 



CENTENA R Y THO UGHTS. 



35 



as a theory ; that its doctrinal basis had been formulated in sub- 
stance time and again ; but this is far from saying that it 
was not grounded in principle, and that it did not nucleate 
around a system of truth, and derive and sustain its life from 
hidden springs of doctrine. The truth is, that no Church 
has. ever presented a more compact and well-defined creed, 
and that no creed was ever more directly productive of a 
movement than was the creed of Methodism productive of its 
work. It was a faith as unmistakably as it was a feeling — the 
faith and feeling twin and inseparable. Nor is it true that its 
theology was not in important respects a novelty. If it was 
conspicuously an awakening of spiritual consciousness, it 
was also a quickening of intellectual life and activity which 
has been felt along all the lines of theological thought, and 
which has radically affected the conception of religion and of 
fundamental doctrines throughout Christendom. No creed 
has been untouched by it. It is believed that it has done 
more to rectify theology, in the matter of popular opinions 
upon the subject of God's sovereignty and man's responsibility, 
on the doctrines of sin, of the atonement, of human freedom, 
than all other agencies put together. It has worked a revo- 
lution on these subjects. This has been one of its most pro- 
nounced and significant functions. It gives caste to the relig- 
ious faith of to-day. Dr. Bellows seems strangely to have 
forgotten the theological controversies carried on with such 
vigor in the first half of the century, and also to have for- 
gotten that victory was so confessedly on the side of the 
Methodist champions, that the doctrines which they opposed 
have been retired from the pulpit and practically from all 
the teachings of the times. It is doubtful if any Church for 
the last hundred years has wrought such profound revolutions 
of thought. 



36 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



In the form and letter, some doctrines were not. indeed, 
changed ; but, seen in the light of their new experience, 
they were, though old, in fact a discovery absolutely new. 
It was the old doctrine of man's fall and ruin, his deep and 
utter sinfulness, which had come down over the ages, 
handed along from Paul to Augustine, and from Augustine 
to Calvin and Luther; the same that was preached every 
Lord's day from all the pulpits and recited from all the 
Catechisms ; it was that same doctrine, but what now was it 
that set the people smiting their breasts, and hurled them to 
the earth like swaths before the mower's scythe ? Was there 
no new essence here I It was the old doctrine of the Cross, of 
the Atonement, formulated in all the creeds, discussed with 
masterly skill in the theological books, and meted and bounded 
with geometrical precision in the sermons and the treatises of 
the learned. But what was it now that set the people weeping 
when they heard of Calvary, and which broke their hearts 
when they listened to the story of redemption I After all. 
there was something new in the meaning. The essence was 
something which the old teachings had somehow missed. 

Never before since apostolic times was Christ so preached. 
Never was so preached the Holy Spirit, his awakening, con- 
verting, and sanctifying power. Never was so preached the 
doctrine of pardon, the promises, the new birth, the witness 
of the Spirit, a full, free, and perfect salvation. These great 
experimental verities were now voiced as if they had been 
never before spoken. The letter that killeth was in the 
world ; stark and dead, it rattled its dry bones over every 
pulpit in Christendom ; but now it became alive, a spirit 
entered into it, and sent it burning its way into the hearts of 
men. It was the same truth, yet as different from the other 
as a living body differs from a dead corpse. 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



37 



Methodism was then a theology, and was new, in that it 
was a theology made alive by the indwelling Spirit, intensi- 
fied in the perception and conviction of the truth, brought 
down from the cold, arid regions of mere dogmatic statement, 
from the misty height of intellectual speculation and logic, 
to the warm and fervid atmosphere of sympathy and affec- 
tion. The God that had been afar off, sitting on the throne 
of his feelingless absolute sovereignty, who for his own glory 
and sovereign pleasure had fixed all events in fate, electing 
some men to salvation and consigning others to hopeless rep- 
robation, was therein brought nigh, and a Father's heart was 
given him. Jesus took flesh and walked among us, and we 
beheld his glory. Sin and holiness and heaven and hell 
were brought down from the realms of doubt and mysticism, 
and men saw and felt that they were real, great, and ear- 
nest verities. In a word, the whole circle of truths which 
relate to the soul's peace, and to the soul's life and destiny, 
was conceived of and felt with a freshness and power, as if 
a revelation now for the first time made them known on earth. 
Thus Methodism's first and second power, now blended into 
one, was the power of a great soul-earnestness, fused with 
the grandest and mightiest truths conjointly battering at the 
doors of human hearts, and carrying them by escalade or 
winning them by love. The same writer already quoted, 
with a better and truer appreciation, says : " It commenced 
as an inspiration. It was a new out-pouring of the Holy 
Spirit. Its apostles and missionaries had a baptism as of 
fire. The Spirit of the Lord was upon them to preach his 
Gospel to the poor. They went forth strong in his might, 
taking no scrip, nor staff, nor thought of what they should 
say. Their preaching was not with enticing words of man's 
wisdom ; but they spoke what he gave them to utter with an 



38 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



unction and power which, shivered the shield of the adversary 
and overcame the proudest heart. For three quarters of a 
century Methodism was the breath of God blowing across 
the continent, refreshing and reviving faint and dying souls, 
giving new life to millions, and changing the condition of 
the religious atmosphere of the world." 

Springing from its deep spiritual consciousness, its intensi- 
fied experiences, its apostolic zeal, its awful sense of sin, its 
clear conception of the new birth, its emboldening faith of 
assurance, its clear sense of the witness of the Spirit, its tri- 
umphant joy, its grand idea of the redemptive scheme as 
universal — as within the reach of every sinner, however out- 
cast, as furnishing the means of a perfect salvation to the 
entire world — its great thought of the fatherhood of God 
and the equality and brotherhood of men, its greater empha- 
sis of the doctrine of human freedom, its vindication of the 
divine character and government from the aspersions cast 
upon it by the popular creed : — springing from these, as 
voiced by them, clearer and more satisfactory views in 
theology, the preaching of Methodists was new, wonder- 
ful and entrancing. The multitude rushed to hear it, and 
listened as if a new Gospel was for the first time voiced from 
the sky ! Never before since Paul's time had men heard 
such words ! Call it old ; yes, in some sense it was ; but to the 
ears that heard it, and to the hearts that felt it, it was new. 
Every new convert became a preacher. He had something 
for himself to tell, something which he personally knew, 
something which he related with tears of joy from a happy 
heart. The shops and the market thrilled with the marvel- 
ous stories. The words were simple, but the sermons thus 
preached by rustics and citizens and women were full of ir- 
resistible pathos and awakening power. They were all preach- 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



39 



ers, both at home and in the assemblies where they were 
permitted to tell the wonderf illness of God's love in saving 
them. Their enthusiasm kept the flame burning. While 
the lay converts kept fuel on the altars at home, the preach- 
ers, forsaking all, without scrip or purse in some instances, 
after the apostolic model, went over wide circuits, some- 
times hundreds of miles, preaching every day, often several 
times a day, to small companies or large, in the cabins and 
by the roadside. They had but little learning — some of them 
none — but they had learned by experience the story of the 
Cross. The people preferred, them to the gowned and pom- 
pous parsons. Crowds followed them to the school-house, or, 
when that was denied, to the court-house, or, when that was 
denied, to the private house or barn or grove. Many 
mocked, more wept ; multitudes were saved. 

It is doubtful if, on the whole, the world ever heard more 
effective preaching, or, even not excepting the first fifty 
years of apostolic ministries, if ever more signal divine 
power attended the truth than accompanied these wilderness 
preachers, fitly styled " the thundering legion of the militant 
Church." It was no uncommon thing for men to fall sud- 
denly under their words as if pierced with an invisible 
arrow from Jehovah's quiver. 

We have said that the environments accounted for much. 
These, in justice, must be taken into the account. These 
may be summed up in these statements : The jDeople, neg- 
lected by the Churches, had been permitted to fall into a 
dreadful state of ignorance about spiritual things, and into 
a frightful condition of irreligion and wickedness. This was 
so in the old world when Methodism sprung up there. 
Isaac Taylor, himself a Churchman, says, when Wesley ap- 
peared the Anglican Church was " an ecclesiastical system 



40 



CEXTEXARY THOUGHTS. 



under which the people of England had lapsed into heathen- 
ism, or a state hardly to be distinguished from it." and that 
Methodism "preserved from extinction the languishing Xon- 
conformity of the last century, which, just at the time of the 
Methodist revival, was rapidly in course to be found no- 
where but in books." * A high American authority says : 
" That something of vital Christianity exists among professed 
believers of every name : that the doctrine of justification by 
faith is generally understood and preached : that we are not 
blind Pharisees, or dead formalists, or practical Socinians 
and deists, we may trace the cause in great part — we can- 
not tell how largely — to the Holy Club of Oxford Meth- 
odists." f 

Bishop Burnet says : ' ; I cannot look on without the deep- 
est concern when I see the imminent ruin hanging over this 
Church, and, by consequence, over the whole Reformation. 
The outward state of things is black enough, God knows ; 
but that which heightens my fears rises chiefly from the 
inward state into which we are unhappily fallen.'' Of the 
clergy he says, " The much greater part of those who come 
to be ordained are ignorant to a degree not to be appre- 
hended by those who are not obliged to know it. The easi- 
est part of knowledge is that to which they are most stran- 
gers. Those who have read some few books never seem to 
have read the Scriptures. Many cannot give a tolerable 
account even of the Catechism itself, how short and plain 
soever. The case is not much better in many who. hav- 
ing sot into orders, come for institution, and cannot make 
it appear that they have read the Scriptures." Watts de- 
clares that there was " a general decay of vital religion in 

* Isaac Taylor's " Wesley and Methodism," pp. 56, 57. 
f "Bibliotheca Sacra," January. 1864. 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



41 



the hearts and lives of men, that this declension of piety and 
virtue was common among Dissenters and Churchmen." 

Archbishop Seeker says : " Such are the dissoluteness 
and contempt of principle in the higher part of the world, 
and the profligacy and intemperance and fearlessness of 
committing crimes in the lower, as must, if this torrent of 
impiety stop not, become absolutely fatal." * The condition 
of religion in America was scarcely better than it was in 
England. The clergy never fell so low ; but the prevailing 
doctrine had in some sections emptied the churches, and 
produced a wide-spread indifference and neglect, and in 
others the means of grace did not at all exist. There was 
no adequate provision, except in the heart of the population, 
for the Christianization of the masses, and they were in dan- 
ger of becoming paganized. After the great revival in New 
England, called the Edwardian revival, the Churches had 
lapsed into a deadness which portended in some sections the 
dissolution almost of Christianity itself, even among the 
Puritans. A generation had passed with but few conver- 
sions, and the term had become a derision. 

This lamentable condition was largely owing to the prev- 
alent doctrine of high and ultra Calvinism. The preach- 
ing had deadened the religious consciousness, and pro- 
duced a revolt equally both of conscience and reason, and 
stifled all respect for Christianity, except on the part of 
the few who supposed themselves to be of the elect. 
The churches were neglected, and the ministers of such a 
faith naturally enough, with few exceptions, gave themselves 
no concern. Preaching was confined to the town, and the 
clergy went only where they were called. There were no 
adequate means, no disposition, to carry the Church into the 

* See Stevens's "Centenary of American Methodism," pp. 43-45. 



42 



CENTENARY TR 0 UGHTS. 



wilderness. The ministry was a guild, more learned than 
zealous, proud of their rank and careful of their dignity, 
but not given much to labors for the poor and the degraded. 
Such a faith and such a clergy made a condition of things 
favorable to the successes which attended Methodism. Dis- 
gusted and disheartened with a gospel which seemed to them 
no gospel, as in fact it was not, their hearts were ready to 
leap when they heard of a different kind of God and Saviour 
to that which they had learned from the Catechism, and 
which had frozen and frightened them when children. The 
non-elect were the million. The Methodists betook them- 
selves to these, and brought not only the truth to them, in 
denial and protest against the awful decree which excluded 
them, but brought the Church also. There was already a 
revolt deep-seated and wide. Incipient Unitarianism was 
beginning to lift a protest against the horrors of orthodoxy. 
It was cleaving the Christian camp in twain. But it had 
nothing to give the hungry people. It could divide, but 
could not build up. Its errors were even a worse evil 
than those against which it protested. It tended to de- 
struction of the foundations. This is not what the deepest 
in man wants. It proved a failure. Universalism was a 
protest, but it did not win. The protest was hailed, but 
the refuge it offered was not considered safe. There were 
many that were willing to risk it. or any thing, to escaj^e 
the horrible decree. But, though conscience and reason 
were on the side of the protest, they could not be en- 
listed in favor of the proposed remedy. Methodism cut the 
gordian knot. It joined in the protest : its voice was loud- 
est : its logic was keenest. It discovered and pointed out a 
refuge which was built on the foundation of right reason, 
conscience, and the word of God. It bridged the gull 



CEXTEXARY THOUGHTS. 



43 



between the heathen million and the elect few. It brought 
back Christ to the people. It brought the Church to the 
perishing multitude. It brought bread for every hungry soul, 
and hope to every aching heart. Conscience stood for it. 
Reason stood for it. The Bible stood for it. The hungry 
multitude were ready to embrace it. Methodism stood so near 
to them that she felt their great heart-throbs. She stretched 
out her arms to them and bade them come. She went into 
their neglected homes and pronounced blessings upon them. 
Tenderness was in her heart and consolation on her tongue. 
She lifted up the fallen, and bound up the wounds of those 
ready to perish. She offered them a physician and an asylum. 

Is it any wonder that they were moved and won and saved ; 
that they heard the heavenly Shepherd's voice' and followed 
him to the fold; or, weak and wounded, were borne in his 
arms % From these unshepherded flocks she gathered the true 
elect, and presented them as the brightest trophies of grace 
and saving power. 

Ye who seek for the philosophy of Methodism's triumphs 
over her enemies, and of the great spiritual work she has 
wrought ; who would explain how it was that she came forth 
a weakling, a pigmy among the giants, an unharnessed 
rustic among hosts of mailed warriors, and seized the prey ; 
how it was that, with sling and stone, she prostrated the 
proud Goliaths, brought down the enemies of her King, and 
put the armies of the aliens to flight ; find it here, in the 
matchless truth which she preached, and specially in this, 
that it was of God and not of man — Omnipotence choosing 
the weak things' of the world to confound the great and the 
mighty, that the glory might be of God and not of men. 
Men may create commotions which run through ages, and 
along the lines of nations ; but when the force culminates 



CEXTEXARY THOUGHTS. 



in regenerations of human souls, in lifting masses and mill- 
ions of men up into the divine, in setting in array agencies 
working the deepest and most sacred transformations of the 
entire aims and pursuits and character of multitudes of men ; 
when this continues a uniform and permanent effect, then 
let men know that, whatever the instrument, the power is of 
God : " Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith 
the Lord of hosts." 

If to-day suggests retrospect, it is no less a Pisgah of 
prospect. If it thrusts upon us memories of the struggles and 
victories of the past, it also bears us on to the contemplation 
of the future. The has heen is linked with the will he. 
As the old century recedes, the new advances. With grate- 
ful tears we wave farewells to the one, and hold up signals 
of welcome to the other. Will Methodism have a future? 
It has been a favorite fancy from the first that Methodism 
would be a short-lived force. Isaac Taylor gave it from 
eighty to a hundred years. The period he fixed for the 
beginning of its rapid decadence long since passed, and 
since that it has gone on increasing as much as at any 
former period. Dr. Bellows said, twenty years ago : " The 
future of Methodism seems to us far less brilliant and 
grand than many predict it will be. The circumstances in 
which it originated, and to which it is indebted for its won- 
derful success, have entirely changed. There is more relig- 
ious interest and zeal in all denominations now than there 
there was a century ago ; all Churches are now laboring to 
ameliorate the condition and improve the character of the 
poor and degraded, as none thought of doing when the 
century commenced. Methodism will not find the material 
to work upon in the future that has been plentiful in the 
past. And Methodism itself has changed. As we study the 



CENT EN AR Y THO UGHTS. 



45 



character and workings of Methodism we are more and more 
convinced that the wave of inspiration in which it had its 
origin has well-nigh spent its force, and will soon die down 
altogether. We no longer witness the same zeal, the holy 
fervor, the renunciation of the world, the self-sacrifice, nor 
the heroic exertion for religion's sake in the Methodist 
Church, as characterized it thirty, or even twenty, years ago. 
Its preaching has lost much of its old unction, directness, 
and savor of life — the dialect of the Holy Ghost — and has 
become doctrinal, defensive, and half apologetic. It is try- 
ing to hold the ground by conforming to custom, courting 
popularity, practicing the worldly arts of success, rather 
than pushing on to make new conquests for the kingdom, 
setting up a new standard of holiness, exposing the soph- 
istries of the schools by the logic of events, and making 
history for other men to write and read. The institution 
has supplanted the inspiration ; and the former stands still 
to tell how high the flood-tide rose, and what wonders it 
performed." 

This is a very suggestive statement, the more so that it is 
that of a generous critic. No one dare say that it is so 
violently improbable as to deserve no attention. It must 
be admitted that history is alive with illustrations of great 
social, civil, and religious movements, which in their time 
bodied immense energy ; yet which, having answered their 
temporary end of reform, or progress, became inoperative and 
vanished as a wave gone by. All great forces are not per- 
manent, either in action or result. The storm lashes the sea 
until it heaves to its lowermost depths, but when it has 
exhausted its fury the tempest subsides, and not a ripple 
remains. 

It is a great, and to us a momentous, question, Is Method- 



46 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



ism to furnish one more instance of the shortlivedness of a 
matchless spiritual movement ? Has she answered the end 
for which she was providentially raised up ? Has the time 
come when her longer existence is an impertinence, an 
anachronism, as a thing out of date— disturbing rather than 
helpful, now that its function is ended ? It may be well to 
remember, that if both nature and history furnish examples 
of great forces which exhaust themselves and pass away, 
they also, in both the natural and spiritual realms, furnish 
examples of the opposite— of forces that contain within 
themselves a law of permanence and self-propagativeness, 
which having evolved one great result, go on evolving others 
greater still in regular ratio of increase, with ever- widening 
functions, as a seed which sends forth a cluster of seeds to 
produce a forest rather than a single tree ; then reproduces 
itself in broader areas each cycle. May not Methodism be 
of this later kind — a divine life-giving power, evolved not for 
one solitary quickening, however great, or for merely a brief 
and spasmodic influence upon and among permanent exist- 
ing forces ; but rather for multiplying and enduring effects — 
a centralized power remaining and energizing forever ? Let 
us be brave enough and true enough to look the problem 
square in the face, and deal with it with perfect candor. If 
there be difficulties and dangers in our situation, it is wis- 
dom not to make ourselves blind to them. If they be irreme- 
diable, we cannot be hurt by coming to the knowledge of that 
fact. If they be such as wise churchmanship can remedy, it 
is important still that they should have timely attention. If 
they be imaginary, we ought to know that. It is a good time 
to study the situation. I confess to the feeling that we have 
reached a critical period in our history. There are some 
threatening omens. I think it becomes us to be thoroughly 



CEXTEXARY THOUGHTS. 



47 



awake. We have probably reached a time when some de- 
terminative action is called for. It is important that we 
should find what that is. 

The gronncls upon which it is inferred that our mission 
as a Church is ended are, that .Methodism is merely a wave of 
emotional excitement — that there is such a change in the con- 
dition that such effects as formerly attended our ministry are 
now uncalled for and impossible — that the material is used 
up — that other Churches are meeting the demands — that 
Methodism has itself changed and has no longer its old 
power. 

That a great change has supervened in the direction of 
these several points there can be no question, and that the 
change makes the same kind of effects impossible is, we are 
ready to believe, highly probable. The change is both 
objective and subjective ; a change within and without ; a 
change in the instrument, in the work to be accomplished, 
and in the phenomena attending the work. It is important 
that we form a proper estimate of the change, to see how far 
it implies decay, if at all ; and to see how far we should look 
for the restoration of vanished phenomena, or attempt to 
bring about effects which have disappeared ; or, in. other 
words, to see whether the change indicates decay or only a 
new phase of life, calling for new methods. Let us calmly 
but earnestly look at the case, as far as possible, in all its 
bearings. I agree to the full with the remarkably incisive 
and beautiful sentiment that " Truth is the sign and secret 
of stability. It is the principle of permanence, and only as 
a body has firm hold on some truth or principle of the 
spiritual order has it the keys of the kingdom and the 
promise of the future." 

It is tacitly assumed, in all these prognostics about the 



48 



CEXTEXARY THO UGHTS. 



decline of Methodism, that the changed state of tilings has 
done away with any need for her further agency ; and that 
the changes within herself indicate failure of energy and 
decrepitude. Even Methodists themselves, under this hal- 
lucination, sometimes become discouraged. Xow, neither 
of these things is necessarily true, and both of them are cer- 
tainly false. If, to be useful at all, she must forever con- 
tinue to meet the same peculiar needs which environed her 
at the start, and none others, then, when those peculiar 
needs were supplied, her function would, of course, cease, 
and there would be nothing left but for her to disappear. 
But from what principle is this to be inferred ? If to 
retain her power she must remain unchanged in every 
particular, then changes in her methods would imply loss of 
vigor and signs of decay ; but what if her internal changes 
are only adaptations to new external conditions, would they 
not, or in any event might they not, in that case only insure 
her permanence, and indicate the best of all power — power 
to adapt herself to varying contingencies without loss of 
vitality? The vicious assumption underlying all such rea- 
soning is, that change from her original type is necessary 
death or degeneracy ; that she must always have a poor and 
neglected mass to look after, or she is of no use ; that there 
must be dead Churches, or there is no need of her ; that she 
must always feed on excitement or be moribund. This 
ruinous notion is sometimes domesticated, and made to breed 
mischief within the Church itself. 

Confessedly a change has come, a change which renders 
some facts and methods impossible now and uncalled for, 
that were once effective and necessary. There is a work to 
be done, but not precisely the same in its accidents while 
the same in its essence. There is the same need of work 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



49 



and zeal ; but work of another kind, and zeal manifesting 
itself in another way. Some of her poor have become rich, 
must she, therefore, forsake them? Would it be wisdom 
or folly to do what is no longer either possible or needed % 
She must recognize the new conditions. She must adopt 
corresponding methods. Her enthusiasm must take a new 
form. The new work may demand other methods : but the 
agent may remain the same. Different phenomenal effects 
may characterize the new kind of work done. 

The questions for us to ask are, What are the changed 
conditions ? What is the work to be done ? and, What are 
the best methods of doing that work % This will be directly 
carrying out the very essence of the original spirit and 
genius of Methodism. To ignore the new demands, and 
attempt to do what has ceased to be of use, were the sure 
guaranty of failure. To assume, that because the occasion 
for what was the very thing to be done when we started 
has ceased, that therefore our mission is ended, — or that, 
because we were adapted to that occasion, we are useless 
to any other, — or that there is nothing else for which she 
is needed, is inconsequent and impertinent. 

What are the new demands, and what ought to be the 

new methods ? Let us not make a mistake here. The 

thing to be done is In essence always the same : there is no 

change in this regard : it is to save men, to bring sinners to 

God, to raise up a holy people. That remains as much the 

work of Methodism to-day as it ever was. It is as much 

needed to-day as it ever was. To accomplish it, changed 

conditions make new demands. Some of the methods which 

were once useful to that end possibly are not useful now, 

or not the best means of meeting present difficulties. What 

would have been useless then may be called for now. She 
4 



50 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



must be skillful enough to discern and provide for the emer- 
gency. It would be improper to say that she is more neces- 
sary now than in the crisis which brought her forth. That 
were impossible. There could be no greater necessity than 
that. But that a greater work has developed on her hand 
than any she has yet done cannot be questioned ; and that 
what remains needs her as much as she was ever needed, is 
also true. The demand for her best energies was never 
greater than it is to-day. 

As she was needed to quicken Christianity at first, so she 
is needed to keep it alive now. She is not needed to look 
after the poor in the same degree and manner that she once 
was, for two reasons — both of them largely ascribable to her 
agency — their condition is not the same as it was then, and 
other Churches have been incited to share in the work of 
providing for them. She is not called to employ the same 
methods she once used, for two reasons : they are not so 
specially demanded, and would not, in the altered conditions, 
be useful. She may not create the same enthusiasm she once 
did. for the same reason — the changed conditions make it 
impossible. 

The change in the general condition of the people and of 
the Churches — their greater intelligence, the better provisions 
for religious instruction, the new appliances, the different at- 
attitude of the masses to religious and spiritual problems — 
render old methods ineligible. Methodism is now called, as 
are all other Churches, to provide the kind of agencies these 
new demands create. What these agencies are will be dis- 
cussed a little further on ; at present we want to keep our 
thought steadily on the questions, What is the work to be 
done ? and, What is the part of the work we are called to 
do ? The answer to these will determine two things, namely? 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



51 



what kind of instrumentalities must be employed, and what 
kind of effects we may reasonably expect will follow. 

First. Methodism must still be a converting power. There 
can be no living Church without this. This is as much a need 
to-day as when Wesley preached to the colliers at Kings- 
wood ; as much needed by the refined and cultured and 
wealthy as it ever was by the ignorant and poor. Awaken- 
ings and conversions may not be attended with the same 
external signs. That is a matter of indifference, and varia- 
ble ; but they must be as genuine and radical as then. The 
mourner's bench may have become obsolete, because no 
longer useful, but the demand for penitence will never 
cease. To awaken it in the soul, and bring the conscience- 
stricken to the Saviour, remains, and will remain, the work 
to which the Church is called. For a hundred years 
Methodism has been chief in this line. She has taught 
others the holy art. That is well, but she must not forget 
it herself. She lifted the poor when they had no other 
friends to help them. The poor we still have with us, and 
she must still go after them as tenderly and earnestly as 
ever. But she has now the added duty of saving the rich. 
This work must not be left undone. 

Second. Methodism must build up her converts in holy 
faith. She must keep sacredly in memory that holiness is 
the sign of the Christian's life. Her ministries must be to 
edification in righteousness and also in intelligence. It is 
hers to develop in the hearts and homes of her people the 
most beautified piety — not cant, not affectation, but sturdy 
and manly religion. 

Millions are looking to her for education and moral train- 
ing. It is hers to build a majority of the Christian homes of 
the coming century ; and, if she discharges her trust faith- 



52 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



fully, of many centuries to come. From her altars are to 
go forth sons and daughters who will fill all positions of 
life, from the lowliest to the loftiest. She is to train them 
to fidelity and honor by instilling into them the fear of God 
and the love of the purest and noblest virtues. Thus she is 
to lay hands on the children of the rising generation, and 
fashion and mold in them, by her teachings and faithful dis- 
cipline of the home and Church, such qualities of charac- 
ter as will make them loyal and useful citizens. It is hers to 
rear the wisest statesmen, the truest merchants, the ablest 
artisans, the most Christian scholars, the ripest divines, the 
noblest saints. Entering into the great reformatory move- 
ments and missionary enterprises, she is, by the consecration 
of her wealth and the employment of her talents to stand 
foremost in spreading the amenities of civilization and in 
enforcing the sanctities of religion among all nations. Her 
hand and intellect are to improve literature and trade and 
art. The truth and the heart-impulse committed to her of 
God she is to disseminate and defend. She is to stand as the 
firm opposer of all error of doctrine, and every wrong and 
wicked practice. She has peculiar relations to theology. 
She is almost the sole representative of certain great doc- 
trines. She must be loyal to them. She is the providential 
guardian of Arminianism. The old Calvinists have largely 
yielded their ancient creed, and use her ' ; shibboleth " in 
their pulpits and later writings ; and to Methodism, for the 
doctrines of human freedom, universal atonement, and free 
grace for all, all alike must turn for their truest and most 
loyal support. "Without bigotry she must be positive. Cul- 
tivating the most generous liberality toward all, she must yet 
be true to her spirit and traditions. Her pulpits and pens, 
under God, have yet a great work to do. 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



53 



Thus it appears, that instead of having become obsolete 
and of no more use, Methodism enters her second century 
with a greater work than ever before her, in the ratio of the 
increase of her means. God will hold her responsible for 
what he has made it possible for her to do. He has given 
her the people, he has given her wealth, he has given her 
the equipment, he has placed her in the van of his great 
militant Church as a world-conquering force : she must 
advance ! 

That there is a glorious future for her of long and hal- 
lowed successes, of magnificent and useful labors, there is no 
room to doubt, unless she become strangely treacherous to her 
duty and opportunities. Her brilliant morning is but the har- 
binger of a resplendent day. The marvels of her first cent- 
ury, we may believe, are but the precursors of the hallowed 
wonders she is to witness in the long march of the coming 
ages. The work looking to her at home is greater than ever 
before. The demand is increased by the widening area and 
immense growth of population in our land. Before the cent- 
ury closes we shall, at the present rate of increase, reach 
three quarters of a million, and before the first half of her 
second century, or in less than fifty years, we shall have not 
less than 150,000,000 at the present rate of increase.* 

* The population of the United States was estimated by the Treasury Depart- 
ment, July 2, 1883, to be 54,163,000 against 52,799,000 upon the corresponding 
date in 1882. It is calculated by the treasury officials that our increase of popu- 
lation is at the rate of 1,300,000 per annum, which is certainly modest, as it is 
only little more than double our increase by immigration alone. The population 
January 1, 1884, may be set down as 54,800,000 against 53,500,000 January 1, 
1883. Of this increase of 1,300,000, immigration from foreign shores takes the 
credit this year (1883) of 560,000 souls. The immigration in 1882 was 712,542. 
The immigration of the last six years furnishes a basis of calculation : 1878, * 
153,207; 1879, 250,565; 1880, 593,703; 1881, 720,945; 1882, 712,542; 1883, 



54 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



This enormous growth of population, with the vast ele- 
ment by immigration from the Old World of peoples of all 
faiths and opinions spread out over the immense new regions 
of the West, where our organization over vast areas is almost 
the only molding factor, creates a demand greater than ever 
before for our vigorous activity. Every thoughtful patriot 
and statesman is depending on us for valiant service. No one 
can tell how much the future prosperity of our country de- 
pends on our diligence and fidelity. Not simply do these 
masses largely depend on us for the Gospel to save them from 
becoming paganized, but to us they look for education and 
assimilation to American ideas and training in the rights 
and duties of freemen. We cannot escape great responsi- 
bility. The same is true of our relations to the Freedmen. 
A large part of them are our wards, and their proper care 
will tax our best wisdom for a long time to come. God 
has made us guardians, and we dare not either resign the 
charge or diminish the care. 

But if our work widens at home, the same is true in the 
mission field. We have sent our sons and daughters into 
nearly all the lands of the world. They have won thousands 
of converts from among the heathen. Whole Conferences 
have grown up in unchristian lands, and others among effete 
forms of Christianity. They, and hundreds of millions 
behind them, look to us for support and for the Christian- 
ization which they need. Should we now forsake them, or 
fail to provide adequately for the demands we have created 
in them, the very heathen themselves would have the right 
to cry out against us. 

560,000. Of the immigration of 1883, 180,000 were Germans; 80,000, English 
and Welsh ; 64,000, Irish ; 30,000, Swedish and Italian ; besides scores of thou- 
sands from other nationalities. 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



55 



We come now to consider requisites to the work yet 
before us. The chapters following deal largely with this 
question, but there are some things which ought to be 
mentioned in this connection. That it is possible we should 
fail, and so fulfill the predictions of our critics, and that 
of this there is danger, has been conceded. That there is a 
drift in the direction of less result than we ought to attain, 
I think, is too apparent to escape observation. What, then, 
are our wants to insure continued success, and send our 
Church along the second century with a power and efficiency 
equal, if not superior, to that of our first hundred years. 

Some things greatly needed at first are not among our 
wants now. Time and the blessing of God have furnished 
these. We do not want riches ; once we did. They are 
very necessary to the work of a Church. There are things 
which nothing but money can provide. But this is not our 
pressing need just now. Once our Church was poor, her 
hands were hard, her garments coarse and plain, her face 
soiled with the sweat of manual, but honest, toil ; her chil- 
dren came from the lanes and highways, from the field and 
workshop. Now she is rich, the cot is changed for the pal- 
ace, the home-spun for purple, the rigging-loft for marble 
churches. When she was poor she was mighty, despite her 
scanty means. Her wealth puts a new power in her hand. 
She can do now what once she could not. One of her 
great wants is the right use of her riches. They may hurt 
or help, which will depend on the manner in which they 
affect her spirit and the use she makes of them. 

She wants not now social rank and position ; once she 
did. Now she has them. She sits among the rulers of the 
land, she lives at court, she is in honor. Her colliers and 
cobblers have come to be merchant princes ; and her rustic 



56 



CENT EN A R Y THO UGHTS. 



converts have grown up families of refinement and culture. 
With all sensible people she is sufficiently respected. 

!N~or is her want in theology, or economy, or adaptation. 
Her theology molds the best thoughts of all schools ; her 
economy challenges admiration, despite the criticism to 
which it is exposed. It is believed that, for the purposes 
for which the Church exists, her economy is not only well 
adapted, but, all things considered, none better has ever 
been devised. It is not perfect, but it has in it the best 
elements of efficiency. It is probable that in the future, as 
in the past, modifications will be needed, and will be pro- 
vided. This is a subject to which the best thought of the 
Church should be patiently and earnestly applied. There 
are, no doubt, some real demands which are not properly 
met ; but that is true of any possible arrangement: and how 
to meet them, without crippling her efficiency in other re- 
spects, is the problem which time and patience and increased 
experience will ultimately solve. 

She does not want to court the world, to let down her 
standard to meet the popular taste, to set her sails for the 
wealthy and the great ; nor does she want to reject or 
repel them. Her mission is to the rich and the poor ; 
the refined and the uncultured ; to one class just as much as 
another, and to all alike. They all crowd her communion, 
and are all in that great world for whose salvation she is to 
labor. She is to know no distinction among them. At her 
altars, whether in the humble chapel or magnificent churchly 
edifice, they are to stand side by side as children of one Fa- 
ther, and brothers equally beloved. We have seen the work 
she is to do now and for the coming age. As we see it, for 
that work, she wants the following things : — 

First. Her greatest want, which is a permanent and per- 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



57 



petual need under all changes of condition and time and 
place, a want as inherent as is that of sap to the life of the 
tree, as the blood or heart itself is to the life of the body, is 
God in her heart — inward power. Her greatest want will 
always be this. This, wanting nothing else, will be of avail. 
Her riches and improved respectability, and even her 
greater learning and culture, will be her bane and her curse, 
w r ill weaken and shackle and destroy her, if she think to do 
without this. What she needs at the beginning of this new 
century most vitally pertains to her pulpits and altars and 
heart shrines. She needs, first of all, most of all — so most 
of all as to be almost alone, as including the supply of all 
other demands — a baptism of her ancient zeal and love and 
fire. This is what she wants in her pulpit. I institute no 
comparison now between the pulpit of to-day and the pulpit 
of the past. I do not infer, from the fact that the marked 
effects which attended the preaching of the fathers do not 
appear in our time, that therefore either the preachers are 
less pious or the sermons inferior in quality. I doubt not 
that both men and sermons are, on an average, equal to those 
of the best days of the Church — neither materially better nor 
worse. The want I name was a necessity then ; it is a neces- 
sity now ; it will be a necessity while the world lasts. The 
pulpit is God's appointment to spiritually impress and save 
men. To do its work effectively its appeals and warnings 
and instructions must emanate from holy hearts and holy 
lips, under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. The greater 
the light, the greater the need of this peculiar power. 
Ignorant masses are much more easily moved and impressed 
than people of culture. Their emotions lie nearer the sur- 
face, and are more readily reached. Their attention is more 
easily gained ; their wonder, their fear, their hope, is each 



58 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



more easily stirred. They are more easily excited to action. 
Their movements are more noisy and demonstrative and in- 
fectious. It is easy to carry the crowd. The same sermon 
that would move some assemblies to the profoundest depths, 
would not create a ripple on others. But be the assembly 
what it may, for spiritual results the need is a divinely 
magnetized agency. 

I do not forget that, after all, it is the truth spoken, 
rather than the speaker, which is the instrument ; but, w T hile 
the truth spoken by polluted lips and without heart, simply 
by the external lip and voice, may sporadically move souls 
to a holy quickening, it will remain a truth forever, that to 
create a holy Church there must be a holy ministry. Like 
priest, like people. If the pulpit lack, so will the pew. To 
carry Methodism as a living power into the coming century, 
her pulpit must be on fire. Nay, she wants more than this ; 
more even than the Holy Ghost in the soul of the preacher : 
(I speak the almost fearful words with reverence :) she wants 
men of breadth, men of study, men of industry, men of 
varied learning, men abreast of the deep-questionings of the 
age, men gifted with rare powers of thought and speech, and 
behind none in acquirements. In saying this I do not for- 
get that our ministry is to be " not w T ith enticing words of 
man's wisdom for God " hath chosen the weak things of 
the world to confound the things which are mighty," that 
our faith u should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in 
the power of God." We have come to an age when all 
these qualities are needed, and when God demands them of 
his servants in the ministry. But deeper by far than all these 
is the want of His presence in the soul. He can magnify 
himself by the weakest instrument, however he might pre- 
fer the strongest ; but he will have holy men to speak for 



CENTENA R Y THO UGHTS. 



59 



him. The Church wants to-day men mighty with God — 
men of faith and the Holy Ghost. If she wants them gifted 
as Paul, or eloquent as Apollos, much more she requires 
them to have as burning zeal and holy love and com- 
plete devotion as glowed in the breasts of the early apostles 
and martyrs. And why shall not this want be met ? Is 
there lack of motive? Are there limitations in God? Is 
there any reason why we should be straitened, except by our 
own unfaithfulness? Do we not know, that in the great 
tight we are passing through, nothing short of our best and 
greatest power, with the Holy Ghost added to strengthen 
and help our infirmities, will suffice 1 Dear as the salvation 
of this world is to God, he has made its salvation largely de- 
pendent on man. So with other precious gifts. Men may 
have civilization if they will ; may have liberty ; may have 
the keys of knowledge ; may have the harvests of the earth, 
or the treasures of the mines : but if they will not, they may 
have barbarism, oppression, ignorance, starvation, and pov- 
erty. So is it with his Church : if she will, she may prosper 
and conquer ; but if her ministers will be treacherous or un- 
faithful, she may degenerate into spiritual death and become 
a mocking and a pervert. 

But the pulpit cannot do this work alone. There are 
wants which it cannot meet. The aggregate force of Meth- 
odism as a religious power and influence must be not what 
the pulpit furnishes : it needs holiness in the pew as well as 
in the pulpit. It needs the concentrated spiritual vitality and 
energy of its great laity ; their fervent prayers and aggressive 
zeal. They hold the sinews of war. Their wealth must be 
consecrated. They must hold up the hands that hold up 
the standard. If there be a want which rises to the first 
magnitude, it is the want of Christian men of business, 



60 



CEXTEXARY THOUGHTS. 



who carry religion into trade, and consecrate their gains to 
the cause of God ; Christian men in the professional and 
influential walks of life ; men of affairs and men of power, 
who will stand up boldly for Christ and his cause. The times 
specially demand this. Power and influence are arrayed 
against Christ. The young are in danger. The stability of 
religious ideas is threatened. The power of the world has 
become alarming. Fashion sets against homely virtue. To 
prevent the breastworks from being carried, and destruc- 
tion from setting in like a flood, in which our most prized 
things shall perish, it is requisite that every friend of God 
and man should be at his post, in the full measure of his 
strength. 

These wants are not peculiar to ourselves. They are com- 
mon to the ministry of every Church, and to the laity of 
every Church. We need strengthening along all the out- 
posts. It will require the combined wisdom of Christendom 
to meet and overcome the adverse forces which are setting 
in from all quarters. Ephraim must cease to envy Judah, 
and Judah must cease to vex Ephraim. The standard of 
loyalty to God and his ordinances needs to be elevated in all 
the borders of Zion. 

There can be no doubt of the fact, that the vast changes 
of the last few years — changes which denote real progress, 
changes which we all hail as beneficent — put us under the 
severest tests, and make new demands u]3on us. There is 
danger that in the rush we become confused. The many 
voices are distracting. In the trampling of the hosts there 
is danger that the most sacred things be trodden under foot. 
The whole world has been so suddenly brought together, 
that in the excitement and hurry of forming acquaintance, 
and comparing customs and doctrines, novelty will mislead 



CENTENAR Y TIIO UG HT8. 



01 



us. New tilings are often better than the old, and are sure 
to be more attractive. Broader thinking and broader ac- 
quaintance with men breaks up old habits of thought and 
feeling. The danger is, that in the process we may barter 
things of value for worthless matters. Here is where we 
need to be on our guard. In the increased light we can- 
not avoid discovering some mistakes. Some things which 
once seemed valuable we will see to be now of no account. 
There is a good deal of such rubbish. We must not attempt 
to hold on to effete things — must not refuse to make sur- 
renders, or determine to hold on to things because they are 
old and have been long cherished. But no more must we 
be too ready to change. It is a bad habit to hold essentials 
loosely. There is such a thing as being too liberal. What the 
Christian world wants to-day is to be willing to welcome all 
real progress, to cast off all old-time fables and prejudices, 
and determine to know and receive the truth, following 
wheresoever it leads. But it must be supremely and un- 
changeably loyal to God and truth. It must refuse to be 
decoyed by blandishments and false lights. In the ratio of 
its liberality must be its unswervingness to whatever ought 
to be held and maintained. There must be no toleration of 
error, no compromise with wrong, no excuse for sin. We 
must dare to be as true as death — unflinchingly, sublimely 
loyal. We must not let our standard go down by default. 
Within the Christian camp are not a few enemies, some 
out-and-out traitors, a good many trimmers, who follow for 
spoil, a multitude who know nothing of what true Chris- 
tianity means, who are all ready to sell out. The time is 
upon us when all such should be relegated to the rear, or 
put in the guard-house, and those who have the Christian 
name should have the courage and manliness to be true to 



62 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



their great Captain. None but Christians must be sentinels 
to-day. Whoever pulls down the flag must be shot on the 
spot. 

The great want, which in effect comprises all others, is a 
deep, genuine, all-pervading, God-given revival of religion ; 
not the spawn of trick or art, but an outpouring of the 
Divine Spirit, which shall not be like an, April rain, which 
fills the mountain torrents for a day ; nor like a spring 
freshet, when, from the thaws of accumulated snows, the 
rivers overflow their banks, and the mighty flood goes 
booming to the sea, leaving only marks of desolation along 
its course ; but a baptism of holy fire and love, of faith 
and zeal and holy power that shall penetrate and permeate 
our souls, and remain there, a godlike presence, to fructify 
for all time ; a revival that shall permanently and radically 
sanctify the body ; that shall not simply restore to us and 
perpetuate among us the ancient spirit which made our 
fathers the great power of God, but that shall make us 
more mighty than they. We ask not that it come in noise 
and tumult, or with external signs ; but the master-want of 
Christendom to-day is a revival that will bring the Church 
from the childhood to the mature state, and present it unto 
her Lord a bride worthy of her spouse. And why not ? If 
our Christianity is what we claim for it; if it is of God ; if 
it is set up in the world by him ; if it is the truth, simple, 
unadulterated ; if it is God's best gift ; if it is man's greatest 
boon ; if it is the sure and only way to God ; if it shows his 
will and helps men out of sin ; if it answers all our question- 
ings and opens heaven : then it is worthy of our supremest 
love and utter devotion, and ought to win our perfect and un- 
swerving loyalty. If not this, it is a cheat, a fable, a snare. 
If we hold to it, let our loyalty be absolute — let us love it. 



CENTENA R Y THO UG HTS. 



03 



This will be the truest, grandest revival. Let Christians 
determine to be Christians, and carry out that determina- 
tion in the pulpit and the pew, and speedily this whole 
world will be alive with the power which saves. But we 
speak specially to the great Methodist family : let the be- 
ginning of our second century be an occasion when we shall 
thoughtfully consider our duty, and when we shall renew 
our loyalty, and each in his place be found acting a worthy 
part. Our Church deserves it ; our character demands it ; 
our souls need it. It cannot fail to be commended of and 
pleasing to God. The whole world will feel its influence. 
If we will not, though we may think lightly of it, it will not 
be a light affair. We shall meet it in the hurt and sorrow 
that must come to our own homes and to our own souls. 

It has been wisely arranged, no doubt, that the Church 
should formally celebrate our centennial. And those in- 
trusted with the arranging of the plan have announced a 
programme. In addition to proper religious observances in 
all the churches, it has been planned that the year should be 
signalized by generous offerings of our substance to Christly 
benevolences. Special attention to the matter of cancelling 
all our church debts, so that we can enter our second century 
without a drag from the first. Certainly nothing could be 
more appropriate, or more likely to give our Zion a good 
God-speed. If it could be announced before the year closes 
that our debts are all paid, it would not only electrify our 
own ranks, but thrill all Christendom with delight. Let us 
not bequeath to the second century the vexatious financial 
burdens of the first. 

The year should be marked with universal thank-offer- 
ings, in which every member and friend should come with 
suitable gifts, to some one or all of the objects named. The 



64 



CEXTHXARY THOUGHTS. 



poor and the rich should vie with each other. The poor 
should not be denied the pleasure, nor should they be per- 
mitted to outdo the rich, giving more out of their poverty 
than the rich do out of their abundance. There ought to be 
no Methodist of large means who will let this year pass 
without large and noble offerings. In this there should be a 
manly and Christian emulation. It would be pleasing to 
God, if we should surprise ourselves in the greatness of our 
gifts, and it would return to our souls in fertilizing springs 
of comfort and growth. The Church should not go out of 
the year until she had established her great educational enter- 
prises and missionary efforts upon the most ample scale and 
enduring foundations, so that the fullest measure of her * 
power may be exerted in all the earth. There ought to be 
no want of funds to meet every demand, at least until the 
tithe of the §1,000,000,000 out of our coffers should be laid 
upon the altars of the Church of our love. There could be 
no surer precursor to the outpouring of blessings upon us 
than the outpouring of our blessings on the work of the 
Church. 

There are some among us who should come with their 
hundred thousand; many who should bring their tens of 
thousands ; a still greater number who should come with their 
thousands ; a vast multitude with their hundreds ; half of the 
two millions of our Zion with their tens ; and there should not 
be one among all our millions that should not in some way 
brin^ his offering of a few dollars for some one of the causes 
named as among our centennial beneficiaries. It would give 
new spring to our life and new inspiration to faith, if we could 
come with a devising which costs us some sacrifice ; if we 
could come with our gift, baptizing it with prayers, and lay- 
ing it on the Church's altar, with the inscription, in the gift if 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



65 



not on it, " For the sake of our dear Church." Let the 
Methodist people arise and make the year memorable and 
glorious! God has permitted us to live this year; let us 
erect our Ebenezer. Come, legislators ; come, judges ; come, 
ye of the learned professions ; come, merchants ; come, manu- 
facturers ; come, artisans and mechanics ; come, farmers ; 
come, laborers ; come, fathers, and mothers, and children ; 
come, all. Crowd the altars of the great churches and of 
the small chapels, and fill the house of God with the fruits 
of your toil and earnings, and pray as you come for a new 
and mighty baptism on our dear Methodism. See if God, 
according to his ancient promise, will not open the windows 
of heaven, and pour out such blessings that there will not be 
room enough to contain them. 

Out from the bosom of that hundred years now fled what 
events have sprung ! how, in its progress, the whole face of 
the world has changed ! its social status, its civil institutions, 
its mechanic arts, its industries, its civilization, its educa- 
tional status, its religious ideas, its learning, its every thing 
that goes to make up a world's life and history ! What 
strides of growth and advancement in all directions of wel- 
fare ! We are filled with astonishment as we look back 
and call to mind what has come to pass in our time, in the 
last fifty years. Who, of all the millions that lived in the 
century's dawn, but who are now among the dead, dreamed 
of a tithe of the wonders we have lived to see % Not one ! 
The sublime procession of impending events was then wait- 
ing — coming — even as it has marched forth ; but it was not 
visible to mortal eyes. It struggled already in the womb, 
impatient of birth — but they knew it not. It is so ever! 
The present carries the future, and is full of prophecy, but 

our dull eyes cannot read the mystic inscriptions. 
5 



66 



CEXTEXAR Y THO UGHTS. 



So with the century upon which we enter. It is not given 
to us to know what it will unfold. We see its dawn, the 
twilight of its iridescent morning, but its meridian and close 
lie hidden on the other side of the cloud. The glory of its 
revealings is reserved for our children, three generations 
away„ That it will be wonderful we cannot doubt. That 
there are changes greater than any yet witnessed, impossi- 
ble as it seems, is most probable — changes still more be- 
neficent, we may hope. There will be more of knowledge • 
more humane feeling of man for his fellow-man ; more jus- 
tice tempered with mercy ; more melioration of the suffer- 
ings of misfortune and poverty ; less of cruelty and war ; less- 
of the oppression of the weak by the strong ; less drudgery 
and degrading toil ; womanhood will be .delivered from the 
drudgery imposed by man; childhood will be reared with 
more care and tenderness ; men will be more generous be- 
cause more strong ; civilization will take the place of barba- 
rism, and will be more refined and pure and noble ; the 
hidden treasures of nature will be brought forth ; new forms 
of good and comfort will be discovered ; machinery will 
relieve much of the severity of work ; and man will have 
more time for reading and thought and the amenities which 
beautify and ennoble life ; the superstition of ages will have 
disappeared ; Christianity will be the reigning religion of the 
world ; science will still further sup]3ort the truth of revela- 
tion, and deeper knowledge will vindicate religion ; the world 
will be better in all the elements of virtue and happiness 
than it is to-day. So we hope ; so we believe. 

Our own land a hundred years hence : — how think you of 
it ? It almost takes one's breath to look forward ! Two hun- 
dred millions will crowd its domain. They will come from 
all lands, the overflow of the old and crowded countries of 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



67 



the globe. The English tongue and our free institutions 
will fuse them all into one. A dense population will cover 
the immense reaches from the Atlantic to the Pacific. 
Assimilated to American ideas and feelings, they will give 
new vigor to our national life, and firmness and formidable- 
ness to our power among the nations. So we hope ; so we 
believe. 

Brothers, we have come to a great day. The sixth millen- 
niad is in its blossom, and maturing fruit. Backward rolls 
the long night of dark and troubled ages. Onward comes 
the morning radiant with blessing. The mountain tops are 
already aglow. A little on, and the vast globe will roll 
around in a sea of light, bathing earth and sky in the glory 
of the Lord. 

You have heard the corn grow in the fields — the gentle 
rustle of eager life running along the tender fiber ; you 
have heard the incoming of the tide as the sea rises upon 
the land ; you have heard the great gales of spring chasing 
away the frosts and the snows. Hearken ! do you not hear 
the low murmur of the coming age ; the spirit-tread of its 
advancing hosts ; the faint sweet note of its far-off but ever- 
nearing song, floating along the arches of the descending 
century — the songs and shouts of a redeemed and regen- 
erated world. It is coming, brothers ! It is in the promises, 
and nothing can stay it ! The long, black wings of retreating 
night go hustling down the past ; the rosy wings of morn- 
ing come sweeping up the future ; and the shouts of angels 
and of men usher the advancing day. 

If in that great future we would occupy a worthy place, 
we must act a worthy part. More and more those only will 
be accorded honor among men who deserve it. The weak and 
irresolute will have no voice in the councils which control 



68 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



the future. We are to determine what our position shall be. 
When the kingdom comes ; when right and truth ascend the 
throne, as they will ; when men get to be men, and the useless 
and unpitiful go down with the false and the harmful ; 
nothing will preserve us but our ability to serve the interests 
of the advancing race. God has committed to us a great 
trust ; he has given us a great power ; he has put the mill- 
ions into our hands to be molded and fashioned; he has 
given us the key-position in the crisis hour ; he has made us 
the heart of the host — the hand of the right arm. America 
will determine the future of the world. From her will ema- 
nate the deciding factors. We ought to be chief among the 
determinating factors of America. It is not possible for 
others to deprive us of that position if we do not prove our- 
selves unworthy to hold it. The winners will be the work- 
ers ! Methodists of America ! I would not inspire you with 
the spirit of unholy rivalry, or stir you up with desire or 
ambition of ascendency or leadership ; but in the name of 
your Lord I exhort you, emulate all ; if you may, transcend 
all in the magnificent service you render humanity in the 
crucial time of its struggle ! Let your voice be heard, loud 
and clear, ringing over the field in the thickest of the fight, 
and let your standard be seen steady and moving at the head 
of the advancing column ! Let humanity learn to look for 
your colors, and to know that where they fly are truth and 
victory ! * 

* See Note F, and especially Note G. 



Thoughts for the Pulpit. 



Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, 
whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, 
whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any 
praise, think on these things— -Phil. iv. 8. 

But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, 
he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel— 1 Tim. t, 8. 



CEXTEXARY THOUGHTS. 



(30 



THOUGHTS FOR THE PULPIT 

IT lias been the custom from the beginning, that at this 
hour the Bishop should address the Conference, through 
the class seeking admission, on some aspects of the office 
and work of the ministry. The custom is in such favor, 
and the address is accounted of so much importance, that its 
omission, it is believed, would be considered a grave neglect. 
The prime object of the address is, or ought to be, to renew 
our recollection of vows made, and of the solemn responsi- 
bilities imder which we exercise our sacred office. Conform- 
ably to this custom, I desire to offer a few thoughts and 
advices which seem to me to be both timely and important. 
If in doing so I should occupy a little more time than usual, 
and should express myself with greater plainness on some 
points, I beg the Conference to believe that it will be because 
of profound conviction and of a sense of official responsi- 
bility, to be disloyal to which would render me both cen- 
surable and criminal in my own eyes, and, as I believe, in 
the eyes of G-od and his Church. 

Before proceeding to the particular matter of the address, I 
beg to say a few words with relation to such cases as that on 
which the Conference has just acted. (The matter here 
referred to was the action of the Conference in excusing a 
brother for refusing to go to the work assigned him.) 

You will all remember that among the vows which are 
registered against our names — against the name of every 
member of an Annual Conference in our whole Methodism, 
made deliberately, calmly, and presumably in good faith — is a 
vow that we will accept the work assigned us by the authori- 



70 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



ties intrusted with the assignment ; that we will obey those 
having the charge over us, cheerfully doing the work which, 
in their godly judgment, seems best. Failure to keep this 
vow, except for adequate providential reasons — such as im- 
pairment of health or unforeseen calamities of some kind, 
which render it practically impossible — is viewed as so great 
a fault, that it is classed among the grave immoralities : and 
in our Church order the delinquent is held to answer, as in 
the case of crimes which " exclude from the kingdom of grace 
and glory," and it is made the duty of his superior to pro- 
ceed as in the case of crime. I suggest, whether it is wise 
administration in these times to excuse the presiding elder, 
charged with the responsibility in the case, for a plain and 
obvious neglect of duty ? and, above all, whether it is wise to 
excuse the delinquent himself? The law was enacted as a 
necessary safeguard, demanded by our peculiar economy with 
regard to the pastorate, and to provide against the disinte- 
grating tendencies of neglect, and especially rebellion, against 
church order. I pronounce no judgment in this particular 
case ; but express the fear that there is a growing and danger- 
ous tendency to pass by such infractions of the law, which 
ought to be checked. It is important that we should not be 
permitted to forget, or lose the sense of, the sacredness of 
our vows. 

In this connection I will add yet another word touching a 
kindred evil, which, I think, is growing among us, and 
which, unchecked, bodes much trouble and sorrow : it is the 
matter of intermeddling, in an improper spirit, with respect 
to our work. It is of the very essence and genius of our calling 
and covenants that we are not, and will not be, self-seekers 
— will neither choose nor decline our assignments, but wdl 
accept, as of God, the order of the Church, All scheming 



CEXTHXAHY THOUGHTS. 



71 



and self-seeking is in violation of the compact, in spirit and in 
fact. In express covenant we renounce all worldly aims and 
ambitions, all secular pursuits and plans for personal advance- 
ment. We agree to be assigned to a specific class of duties 
exclusively, and to pursue these with utter devotion of our 
entire time and powers, with no other end in view but the 
glory of God and the advancement of his Church in the 
earth, accepting such support as may be provided for us. 
We agree not to meddle or interfere for our personal promo- 
tion, or complain at hardships and sacrifices ; this, if not in 
exact phrase, is the clear import and spirit of our covenant. 

One single, high, commanding object moves us in our 
choice of this work : the call and command of God. I call 
attention to this now, that I may suggest whether there are 
not symptoms among us of alarming apostasy at this point. 
Have we been sacredly true to the covenant ? Are there not 
observable among us practices wholly inconsistent therewith ? 
and do not growing tendencies admonish of approaching 
danger? Are we not over-anxious and unbecomingly exer- 
cised about dignity and remunerativeness of position ? There 
is a difference in the fields of labor as to comfort, honor, and 
temporal compensation ; and, also, it must be admitted, as to 
opportunity of personal culture and broad and generous use- 
fulness. These differences cannot fail to affect us. We are 
men, and cannot but feel the attraction of the superior posi- 
tions. They appeal to our best qualities not less than to our 
unworthy impulses. We have families, and cannot, and 
ought not, to be unmindful of them. Thus our very virtues 
expose us to the most powerful temptations. Our chief dan- 
ger comes from the fact that the lure seems innocent, and 
is answered by our best and manliest qualities. We need, 
therefore, to be specially on our guard. A prize awarded 



4 



72 CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 

on the ground of merit, or as the expression of unbiased 
appreciation, becomes a badge of honor ; and, modestly en- 
joyed and worn, is a distinction which one may worthily prize : 
but, gained by trick, or even personal effort, is both ignobly 
held and unwisely bestowed. The aspiration after high posi- 
tion, kept within bound, may be. even a praiseworthy stim- 
ulant; but when it is permitted to consent to the use of any 
other influence than that which springs spontaneously from 
recognized superior ability and fidelity, and which, unsolicited, 
leads those charged with the responsibility to recognize our 
fitness, is both improper and unworthy. All scheming and 
planning to secure such position on the ground of personal 
favor or for mere personal gratification, or an assumption of 
personal merit, should not be simply condemned, but deserves 
to be severely rebuked. It is to be feared that there are covert 
methods among us even more discreditable than open and di- 
rect solicitations, which must, in the nature of the case, always 
be confined to the few whose overweening vanity makes them 
insensible to shame, and the higher promptings of all manly 
and noble natures. I refer to secret combinations of self-seek- 
ers to advance each other's promotion by various base expe- 
dients, possible only to mean and selfish natures, such as 
procuring nominations for place by returning similar service, 
putting obstructions in the way of others in order to open 
positions for ourselves, and other things of the same kind. 
Take whatever form it may, self-seeking is a practical re- 
nunciation of our vows, and when indulged must under- 
mine all manly self-respect, and tends to destroy both the 
confidence and esteem of all right-minded people. Once per- 
mitted to gain possession of us, all other things and considera- 
tions merge into the simple question, how shall the coveted 
end be reached? Plans are set into operation to prevent 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



worthy competitors from gaining the coveted place ; mis- 
representation is called to the aid of, sinful ambition ; and 
the point, if gained, is at the sacrifice of so much, that when 
reached it is a prize ignobly won and dishonorably held. 
The schemer may succeed in gaining a place, and by trick and 
conspiracy may keep himself in coveted conspicuity, but it 
will ultimately be at too great a cost, both to himself and the 
Church, the sanctity of whose pulpit his vanity and selfish- 
ness defile and disgrace. There is a worthy and noble 
ambition for saintly men, calculated to call out all their 
highest powers and develop every thing great in them ; but 
it is too lofty to make self-seeking its method, or self-aggran- 
dizement its objective point and end. It has a supreme goal. 
It seeks to make the most of one's self ; to elaborate, to the 
highest degree, his all of faculty and power ; to qualify him- 
self for the place of largest demands and usefulness ; to bring 
his riper manhood to its utmost perfection. It covets the 
highest gifts ; would excel in all lines of useful endeavor ; 
sees in God, and Christ, and human need, and salvation, 
something greater than self ; and is absorbed in these, con- 
tented to be used in any way for the glory of the one and 
the accomplishment of the other, and ready to abide the 
awards of others rather than to think of self. 

May I call attention to one other form of self-seeking 
which, I think, we all feel to be growing and assuming 
unhealthy proportions among us, which develops especially 
about the close of the quadrennial term '( I need hardly say 
that I refer to the evil of " candiclating " for the General 
Conference and for the official posts of the Church. 

This is of the same general character as the evil already re- 
ferred to, with some mitigations. It is not, perhaps, so di- 
rectly a breach of vows either in letter or spirit, and so lacks 



74 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



the worst elements of culpability ; but, after all, its savor is 
bad, and its effect on character both blighting and corrupt- 
ing. If less than a crime, it is yet both unbecoming and 
unwise, and unworthy of the sacred character we profess and 
the sacred office we hold. The whole Church has more than 
once been shocked at what has seemed, at times, to be a 
scramble for the most holy places. Any position so gained — 
whether in some coveted editorial chair, or some secretaryship 
or agency, or the still more sacred office of the episcopacy — 
is held in shame and dishonor. He who covets such posts, 
and stoops to arts to win them, proclaims himself unworthy 
of them, and introduces into the question facts of personal 
disqualification which ought to defeat his aspirations. 

But, passing from these incidental matters, I come now to 
the more important subjects which it was in my thought to 
bring to your notice and lay upon your minds. I earnestly 
covet grace to speak suitably and impressively ; and I crave 
your careful attention to what may be said, as well as your 
prayers for myself that I may be aided to say the very words 
which ought to be spoken, and in the spirit and manner 
that will make them, not merely most entertaining, but most 
useful. 

If I succeed in carrying out my purpose, my thoughts 
will group themselves around these four points : By what 
authority are we ministers ? For what end are we minis- 
ters % What are the requisites in our ministry to the accom- 
plishment of the end proposed ? Our responsibility for the 
manner in which we perform the duties our office involves 
and imposes. Or, comprising all in a single sentence, I wish 
to speak of the functions of our sacred office. 

Returning to the order indicated, let us for a moment 
consider the point, By what authority are we ministers \ 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



75 



There is a very current impression that the ministry, like any 
other profession, is a self -chosen one, on which a man enters 
as he does into any business pursuit — choosing his field as 
suits his tastes and convenience, and purely on those con- 
siderations. It is not supposed to require any special con- 
victions or motives other than those which govern a business 
transaction or the choice of a livelihood. That there are many 
in the ministry who have entered it on precisely such an un- 
derstanding there can be no doubt ; and it is hardly to be hoped 
that, despite our explicit teachings on the subject, our Church 
has none such in her pulpits. " By their fruits ye shall know 
them." When we find among us a man who is chiefly con- 
cerned about his own convenience and comfort, it is a straw. 

There is a more respectable notion than this, but resembling 
it. In this case the ministry is not regarded as a business 
merely, selected on ordinary business considerations ; but it is 
still self-chosen, with this difference, that it is chosen from a 
religious motive. This person sees in the ministry a means 
of doing good ; he is interested in the results of such work ; 
it accords with his tastes ;• he is willing to make sacrifices for 
the sake of the good .he hopes to accomplish ; so, on the 
whole, he chooses this work as his life-work in preference to 
any other. He recognizes the Church as a divine institution, 
and the ministry in some sort as a divine arrangement ; and 
proposes, as his chief motive, the glory of God and the salva- 
tion of men. No man can pretend that such considerations 
are low or mean, or that a ministry exercised on such 
grounds is despicable. It is not strictly a secularity, or so 
much service for so much pay ; nor yet a mere personal pref- 
erence for reasons of taste or respectability ; but it passes be- 
yond this into a region of high and manly Christian endeavor 
from a Christian motive. It is presumable that many in 



76 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



all the pulpits, including our own, could, in perfect candor, 
claim nothing more than this; and some that claim more, 
possibly, in the strictest truth, would not measure up even 
to this. , 

The view always held by our Church, and exacted in ex- 
plicit terms of all who enter her ministry, is, that we exercise 
our ministry under a positive and direct divine commission ; 
that God calls his ministers by the Holy Ghost speaking 
in them and to them ; that he separates them and sets 
them apart to this work, and requires it of them. While 
it has never encouraged enthusiastic notions on the subject 
as to the external manner of the call, it has always demanded 
profound and clear inward convictions. It would refuse to 
admit to its pulpits any man, however gifted, who could not 
or would not say that he believed himself called of God to this 
holy work. The Church gives its sanction and authorization 
on the faith of this profession ; and holy hands set him apart, 
not as one who has chosen the office for himself, or even as one 
chosen by the Church, but as chosen of God. Our ministry 
is by divine authority. As the Master chose his first apostles 
and preachers, and said to them, " Go ye into all the world, 
and preach the gospel to every creature . . . and, lo, I am 
with you alway, even unto the end of the world ; " and 
as going, they went under his authority and not man's — so 
we claim that we exercise our office under a similar com- 
mission and by the same authority. We insist upon this, 
and herein is the ground of our confidence. We act and 
speak under authority and command of God. We have not 
set ourselves apart, and we claim nothing on our own account ; 
but he has set us apart, and what we claim is, that we be 
heard as his embassadors. (2 Cor. v, 20.) Upon no other 
ground would we dare to exercise the ministry committed to 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



77 



us. It is not of our seeking. We are aware that this is a 
great assumption. We know well what the statement im- 
plies, but we dare assume nothing less. It is because we so be- 
lieve, that we have confidence in God that in any case, what- 
ever trials may come and whatever opposition may rise up in 
our way, he who has sent us will keep his promise — will be 
with us to the end of the world, and will make his word 
prosper in the thing whereunto he sent it. (Matt, xxviii, 
18-20 ; Rom. x, 15 ; Isa. lv, 9-13.) No one can truly feel 
this conviction without a deep religious consciousness under- 
lying it, and without receiving, at the same time, a sense of 
the responsibility and of the dignity and worthiness which 
such a calling implies. It is well that we should be habitu- 
ally under the sense that we do so profess, and are so com- 
missioned. It will, at the same time, give grace and dignity 
to our character and tone and strength to our ministry ; nor 
will it beget vanity or arrogance, as has been asserted. 
When you see a vaporing or ostentatious preacher, you may 
know that his soul has never been deeply touched with the 
sense of the divine commission, or with the awe-inspiring 
conviction that he is charged with the care of souls. Let 
us anew take the question home to our hearts, "Are we 
so sent ? " 

The next thing to which I desire your attention is this : 
For what — that is, to what end — are we made ministers ? 

With us the Church is a divine kingdom, and the minis- 
try are divinely called to build it in the world ; they are 
ministers of. God to build the Church of God. The Church 
is not for them, but of them instrumentally. They are sent 
to quarry the living stones from the dead world to build its 
walls — stones made living by their handling. This is the 
one idea of their calling, and the one thing to which they 



18 



CEXTEXARY THOUGHTS. 



are called. It is a call to labor and service, but to a great 
and honorable labor and service — " to be workers together 
with God." Let us look for a moment more closely into 
the nature of this work. To build a divine kingdom — what 
does that imply ? Much depends on the answer. It is not 
simply to organize men into a society, under certain rules 
and regulations according to prescribed formula ; nor, yet 
more, is it simply to build into them certain doctrines, and 
separate them to the practice of prescribed ceremonies and 
rituals. It is, indeed, that ; but all that is the merest inci- 
dent — the wood, hay, and stubble. The fundamental work 
is to build men into God ; to make a new and divine. order of 
men, and of families, and of nations ; a transformed and 
twice-born brotherhood ; a community and communion that 
shall be the children of God, and that shall be worthy to be 
called by that sacred name ; that in their faces and inmost 
life and outer conduct shall disclose and manifest their 
celestial birth — " a holy nation, a royal priesthood, a pecul- 
iar people." It is important that it should be fixed in our 
minds that this is our sole function. There should be noth- 
ing equivocal or uncertain here. The idea should be deep- 
cut, and ever present with us. We are sent to be builders 
of the world, or we are nothing, and an impertinence. No 
sublimer work was ever committed to mortals or angels. 
God himself has nothing nobler for his almighty love. 
We are simply workers together with him to realize his 
highest ideal. He puts upon us this highest honor. Am 
I putting too high an estimate on our calling % Any thing 
else or less is the sure guarantee of failure. You will ob- 
serve that I have used two qualifying terms or phrases : 
"We are workers together with God" — we are instru- 
mental workers. We are employed to work to a given end, 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



79 



and the end is made to depend on us ; but we are simply 
servitors to the end — the agency is not ours, it is divine. It 
is a power that works through us, and without which, and 
the right conditions in us for its effectual working, the end 
can never be reached. This, too, we must constantly bear 
in mind. The force which builds is the truth, and the Holy 
Ghost in the truth ; we are but divinely constituted ducts of 
both, so we are instrumental builders. The thing to be 
kept steadily in mind is, the design for which we are minis- 
ters. The recollection of this will inspire, sustain, and guide 
our efforts. We will not then miss the mark by missing 
the aim. Herein, after all, lies the great source and danger 
of failure. 

By remembering that we are sent, not to be builders of a 
cabal, or association, or society, or school of thought, or 
guild of some kind for mutual advantage and entertainment, 
or for mere personal culture and improvement, or for social 
gratification — that it is not our fame, or comfort, or promo- 
tion that is aimed at, or the pre-eminence of the name we 
blazon, but that we are set by the appointment of God to 
build humanity into its highest possible perfection of char- 
acter and condition by lifting it into the participation of the 
life of God and into the fellowship of his thought, we shall 
be best able to catch the inspiration, and grasp the sublimity 
of our calling. Let us blazon this on our banner, so that the 
whole world shall see it, and so that it shall forever be before 
our own eyes, a sublime reminder of duty or a withering 
reprover of treachery and failure : " We are sent of God to 
build the everlasting kingdom." A ministry that cannot claim 
this, that acts not under the inspiration of this idea, that sees 
for itself a less function or a less authority, must lack the 

heroism and other qualities which alone can give sanctity 
6 



80 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



and sacredness to the men who bear it, or to the effect it pro- 
duces. This or nothing ; or if not that, this or hirelings. 

This brings me to the third point to which I desire 
your attention : "What are the requisites for the performance 
of this function ? These may be considered under two 
aspects — personal and administrative — questions of the 
preacher and quality of the preaching. These will be deter- 
minative of the result. It requires built men to build men. 
The builders must use the appropriate tools with the skill of 
master workmen, or the result will be a botch and failure. 

With regard to the person, an indispensable condition is, 
that God select him, and that he put his Spirit within him. 
Whatever qualities he may have, without these he cannot be 
a builder of God's house. God cannot choose an unholy 
channel for his Holy Spirit and for his grace. Whoever 
works with him must be animated and guided by him ; must 
work in the spirit and to the end which determines him ; 
must have a mind to build as he directs, in the way he pre- 
scribes, and on the foundation which he lays. 

Personal ministerial character is so important an integer, 
that I beg to devote a moment longer at this point. He 
that teaches holiness must himself be holy. He that would 
move men toward holiness must himself be centered in holi- 
ness. The force that lifts men must be from above, and yet 
must be in the preacher. Confidence in the speaker, in his 
earnestness and honesty, must precede any profound impres- 
sion of his words. People instinctively demand that religious 
teachers shall have the odor of sanctity about them. Nor is 
the semblance, however complete, sufficient. Souls have a 
way of knowing when souls speak to them. They infallibly 
discern between mere sound and the power which comes from 
the core of a great honest feeling. Out of the depths of the 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



81 



soul come the forces that move to moral revolutions. There 
must be in the minister who would fill the function of his min- 
istry the qualities of heart and mind that win confidence ; the 
brave, generous, soulful qualities that make men feel that 
the speaker stands near to God, and is on intimate terms 
with him ; that beget the feeling that he can be trusted and 
will be found faithful. Men will lend themselves to be 
amused by a wit, even though they know him to be a charla- 
tan ; they will give up their emotions to be played upon by a 
voice or a gesture, even when they are forewarned of the 
i trick ; they will go with the crowd to hear an orator for 
whom they have no respect, or they will even waste time 
in listening to speech that is the mere rant and vociferation of 
a contemptible ignoramus when they are conscious of the fact ; 
but, after all, these are not the agents or agencies that work 
great changes in human lives, and reconstruct human charac- 
ter and human society. Out of such shallow caves come the 
winds which sometimes spread the surface of society with 
foam for an hour ; but when continents are to be lifted, 
another kind of man is wanted. For his work the minis- 
ter should be a man of the manliest qualities, of great- 
headed common sense, of great-hearted human sympathies, 
of broad and generous charity, of incorruptible integrity, of 
dauntless courage, and of holiest sanctity. These qualities 
lay the platform of a great and niasterful power with and 
over the consciences he is to ply with the divine forces of 
the eternal truths he is deputed to preach. And w T hen he 
speaks such truths, from such a platform, the kingdom will 
start and grow in the souls of men ; from him will emanate 
the powers that build the world. 

But sanctity of character, however important, is not the 
only requisite. It is a requisite. God demands it, and the 



82 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



human soul demands it. It is a power ; but alone it builds 
nothing to completeness. It is the one prerequisite to the 
builder which enables him to build. 

This brings me to the second branch of requisites — requi- 
sites in the qualities of the preaching. Before speaking on 
this point let me remind you again that the kingdom is to be 
built out of the elements of the world ; out of and into souls 
steeped in sin and worldliness ; souls absolutely dead to all 
those aspirations and feelings which are to be built into 
them, so building them into God. Out of these dead souls 
the kingdom is to rise ; out of these souls, deformed and 
marred by sin, it is to come forth in spiritual beauty and 
glory ; life is to spring from death, beauty from deformity, 
purity from defilement ; a divine kingdom, eternally filled 
and thrilled with God, is to be raised out of the base and 
polluted elements of depraved and fallen humanity. 

To measure the magnitude and difficulty of the work, we 
must remember, also, that the elements of the kingdom are 
transitional. A single generation, and each generation in 
succession, sweeps away the entire fabric built by all preced- 
ing workers. The force must be equal to the demand to 
repair the wastes of mortality, and to extend and widen the 
empire. It is a vast work to preserve the Church in its in- 
tegrity, but that is not sufficient ; it must be broadened and 
deepened. It is not enough that it be maintained intact, it 
must transcend itself in every respect ; must become a truer 
and diviner Church ; must produce larger and better fruits ; 
must build its walls wider and firmer ; must go on to the 
occupancy of the world, to the overthrow of all false sys- 
tems and all hiding-places of evil and wrong : must break 
every chain, and dry up all the fountains of curable human 
sorrow, before it can bring on the day of universal right- 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



83 



eousness. But to accomplish this, preaching must be awak- 
ening and constructive ; must move men to repentance for 
sin, and build them up in faith and holiness. If it be void 
of these qualities, the kingdom can never be built. They 
are a perpetual need. Observe that this is so, and why 
it is. 

It must be an awakening ministry. But to be awakening 
it must be able to gain attention, and create respect for and 
interest in its deliverances. Here lies the first need. There 
may be places still where people attach respect to preaching 
simply as preaching, and where they will gladly hear the 
Gospel however poorly and by whomsoever preached, and 
where there are no impediments to be removed. But this is 
not the general fact, and with each rising of the sun will be- 
come less and less a fact. People will neither hear us nor 
receive our words as they once did. We must recognize this 
fact and the new demand it makes upon us, and we must 
fairly meet the demand. We can neither scold it down nor 
ignore it. The requirement must be met, or it will turn 
away from us with scorn and empty our churches. Men are 
busy with new questions ; we must comprehend the temper 
of the times. They have distractions and doubts ; they will 
be deaf to our entreaties and advices until they perceive that 
we understand their trouble and know how to deal with it. 
We can do nothing with or for them until we gain a cordial 
and interested hearing. 

By what art shall we accomplish this ? Let me emphasize 
the answer to this question negatively : Not, I would say 
most emphatically, by that weak and shallow trick of weak 
and shallow minds sometimes resorted to, of publishing our 
wares in sensational phrase and bulletin. In my judgment 
nothing in modern times has done more to weaken respect 



CEXTEXARY THOUGHTS. 



for the pulpit and bring ministers into contempt than this 
species of charlatanry. The announcement of quaint titles 
and texts is a low art of a low mind, and proclaims the 
employer of it a religious mountebank in the estimation of 
sensible people. Nor, I would further emphasize, are we 
safe in seeking to gain attention by resorting to novelty of 
manner and method in our discourses — tricks of the comic or 
tragic stage, arts of oratory, pantomime, wit. These all, 
when introduced into the pulpit, reduce it to the level of a 
play-house, and the performer to the grade of a harlequin. 
They may succeed in drawing a crowd for a time, or even 
permanently, as a band of common minstrels or a clown 
does, and the ultimate effect will be substantially the same. 
The pulpit cannot afford such a strain. - It must preserve its 
sanctity or it is nothing ! 

How, then, shall we arrest this surging crowd of immortals 
who will not voluntarily or spontaneously hear us ? By what 
art shall we gain their attention long enough to impress 
them ? 

We have admitted that the times and temper of the peo- 
ple have changed. We emphasize it. The change affects 
the question of our gaining a hearing. We must recognize 
it. The hinderances are many and great. We cannot safely 
ignore them. Men are wonderfully busy these times. There 
never was such a rush for mammon. Two causes produce 
this mammonizing temper. The things wealth will buy make 
men eager to obtain it, and the rush of competition creates a 
larger demand on business energy and time. In the rush 
and scramble they have not time to hear us. Then, too, there 
has come an atmosjDhere of chilling doubt and reigning skep- 
ticism, the result of a process of reconstruction of thought 
which is going on. It has become fashionable to call in 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



85 



question all old ideas and customs. The grip of religion has 
been loosened. Besides, there are new and numerous attrac- 
tions, which did not formerly exist, which draw men away, 
and successfully compete with the pulpit. The newspaper, 
the play-house, the out-door recreation, the lecture hall, com- 
pete for the patronage of the sjDare hours from business. 
The air is full of voices. How shall we, amid this din and 
clamor, gain a hearing 1 How shall our voice tower up 
with such clearness and commanding authority, amid the 
uproar and confusion, as to hush the tumult and compel the 
dizzy, bewildered throng to listen ? Hear it, minister of 
God ! By no art or trick ; vain are all such expedients to 
quell this mob of hungry and frenzied passion. The earth- 
quake would hush them in a moment, the boom of the great 
guns of God would silence them into awe, could they be 
heard ; but human tricks break and dance upon the surface 
of such billows, as straws are torn and twisted in the hurt- 
ling of the tempest. The art by which we can get a hear- 
ing, and the only, is the simple art of great, "sincere, honest, 
manly speech, so freighted with God's eternal truth that it 
will come into their misplaced excitements like the booming 
of great guns from the hills of eternity. 

But how can we do it % There is but one way. Have the 
soul full of God, and light, and conviction, and love for 
perishing men ; and preach as for eternity — preach, not to 
please, or amuse, or pander to prejudice, or passion, or wealth, 
or fashion ; but, with the inspiration of the thought that you 
are God's messenger, and that eternal destinies are to be 
affected by your words. Preach because you believe and feel 
the tremendous things of which you speak ; preach with the 
idea that what you say is to help, possibly to save, some soul 
from death ; with the feeling that you are affecting men and 



86 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



women in their deepest interest forever. Go to your pul- 
pits from your knees, with your soul on fire with great 
thoughts and great truths. Go, after you have done your 
utmost to find the mind of God — after you have grappled 
to your utmost powers with great questions — after you have 
endeavored to realize to yourself the solemnities of judg- 
ment and eternity ! Go, remembering that there are hungry, 
aching souls waiting for your words ; souls buffeted amid the 
billows of temptation; souls in the slough of despair and 
wilderness of doubt ; souls waiting and watching, amid dark- 
ness and trouble, for light ; souls looking this way and that 
for some helpful signal ; souls waiting for a voice ! There is 
all this in every congregation more or less to which you 
speak : young men in the breakers ready to perish, old men 
in fear, fathers and mothers in distress, hungry e}^es looking 
to you from the pews ! Go, remembering that the enemy is 
lying in wait at every corner, and setting his snare at every 
door ! Go, with the vision of the drinking saloon, and the 
open doors to the dens of shame, and the whole array of the 
avenues of sin luring the unwary feet of youth. Go, with 
life and all its sorrow and earnestness and danger in your 
mind, and with death and judgment in your thoughts ! Go, 
looking away, beyond death, into the awful realm of the 
future — its possibilities of glory and of shame ! Go, with the 
feeling that you must save souls or die in the attempt ! 

Thus going, your voice will ring like a clarion in the din, 
and swell above the clamor of tongues like a bugle ; and men 
will hear, and, catching the charm, will turn and listen ; and 
they will come and come again, and will not weary of lips 
that speak such words. Let them see that you mean what 
you say ; that you are not novices nor ignoramuses ; that you 
are alive to the times ; that you are capable to speak ; that 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



87 



you have wrestled with the difficulties which trouble them, 
and have mastered them ; that you mean to be helpful to 
them and know how to be ; that you are great-souled men 
and are earnest in your work : you will not want appreciating 
hearers. 

Do not despise the heads of the people. Many of the 
hinclerances you are to cope with lie in the region of the 
brain. You must be able to grapple with these. The only 
way to the heart is often through the head — it is always the 
safest way. Capture the mind, win the reason to your side, 
stop all the boastings of inflated pride and skepticism ; and 
then, with conscience on your side, as it will always be, 
your case is clear. Hold the head and you will control the 
heart. 

You will see by all this that you have a serious work on hand, 
which must lay under tribute your best powers. The work 
you are set to is too great to be achieved with a left hand. 
You cannot be idlers or hap-hazard in your plan. To build 
men you must yourselves he men. Men will attend when 
men speak. Let nobody suspect you of narrowness or the 
subterfuges of ignorance and insincerity. Have the courage 
which comes from real conviction, and the devotion which, 
comes from a sense of the dignity and importance of your 
work. Do not depend on genius. Beware of the snare of 
fluency. Do not expect inspiration will supplement idleness. 
Lay yourself out for great endeavor. Work mind and heart 
to their utmost bent in preparation. Then cast yourself on 
God, and dare any thing to save souls. " Cry aloud, spare 
not ;" and certain as God is God, your word will not be a 
mere fulmine. The plow will stop in the furrow, the anvil 
will wait for the hammer, the streets will empty themselves, 
and men will stand still to hear you. Mammon will let go 



88 



CENTEX AE Y THO UGHTS. 



his grip, and doubt and indifference and dissipation will give 
way, and dead men will come out of their graves of sin to 
hear and ponder the great words which come from the fur- 
nace fires of an earnest heart and masterful mind. It is God 
that sends you ; and if you are faithful, heaven and earth 
may pass away, but his word will not return to him void, but 
will prosper in the thing whereunto he sent it. Avoid plati- 
tudes ; use plain Saxon ; remember that flowers are blank 
cartridges or wreaths which dull the edge of your blade ; deal 
heavy blows ; go where the enemy is, and smite with mighty 
truths ; dare to hunt him in his strongholds, but be certain of 
your ammunition and careful of your aim. It will soon come 
to be understood that your pulpit forges thunder-bolts, and 
men will hasten to see the combat, at the risk of being 
wounded themselves ; nay, they will come that they may be 
wounded — killed and made alive again. 

Having now gained attention, we must see to it that the 
truths which we preach, while meeting the reasonable de- 
mands of the intellect, shall rouse the conscience and move 
and win the heart. One thing must be gained : men must 
be made to feel their sins and sinfulness. They must be 
roused to a sense of guilt ; they must be made to see the 
need of a Saviour ; they must be pressed to decision now. 
The peril of delay must be pointed out ; the way of safety 
must be made plain ; God's mercy and willingness to save 
souls must be declared. All discussions and dissertations 
must look to immediate results. As under the old empire 
all roads pointed to Rome, so all your lines must point to the 
Cross. All possible appeals must be made with the pathos 
of earnestness and with the tenderness of love. The whole 
effort, whether addressed to the mind, to argue away its 
doubts ; or the conscience, to awaken its rebukes ; or the heart, 



CEXTEXARY THOUGHTS. 



89 



to move its fears or hopes, must have one end in view — to 
bring the sinner to his Saviour now. 

. Through the head we must go to the heart, and account 
the sermon lost that does not somehow storm that citadel. 
Having cleared the way, by massing our heaviest batteries 
against its strongholds, and bringing to bear against its al- 
most impregnable defenses of sin the great guns of the divine 
law, (so silent in our pulpits these days,) we must capture the 
heart. One has said that the preaching of the law is one of 
the lost arts. We must restore it, and burnish the old blade, 
which in times past did such mighty execution upon the 
ranks of the King's enemies ; but we must preach it better 
than our fathers did. JSTor must we forget the mightier 
power of love. Calvary must be more prominent than 
Sinai. The thunder and fierce glare of the one must be 
tempered with the sweet and gentle radiance of the other ; 
the stern justice of the avenging Sovereign must go hand in 
hand with the pathetic tenderness of the loving Father ; the 
harsh notes of warning must mingle with the persuasive tones 
of entreaty and compassion ; appeals to fear must not super- 
sede the stronger and more constant and more cogent appeal 
to gratitude and hope and love. If we may not omit the ter- 
rors of judgment and coming doom of an endless hell, much 
more must we seek to attract by the glory of the immortal 
heaven held forth to hope and faith. The great awakener 
is the simple but awful and sublime truth of our guilt and 
danger, and of God's almighty love and grace ; man's soul, 
its possibilities of good, its exposures to evil ; eternity, with 
its aw T ful significance. While men are men, these things must 
move them more profoundly than any other possible subjects 
of thought. The conscience, the affections, the fears, the 
hopes, the imagination, the reason itself, all feel their mighty 



90 



CENTENARY THO UG-HTS. 



spell. We must be faithful to these motors, and apply theui 
in all our sermons with tenderness, but with emphasis. 

But yon say, " I am not a revival preacher. I have no 
gifts of that kind." This kind of remark may have one of 
several paternities. Xo doubt in some cases it represents 
modesty — sometimes it is an affectation of modesty — but 
more frequently it means simply, " I have no taste for that 
kind of work.'' In some cases, no doubt, it represents a real 
feeling, and possibly a positive regret. And it must be 
admitted that all do not possess some natural or acquired 
qualities which are most available for that kind of work. 
It is even possible that some could not be useful in that 
way. with any amount of desire or erf ort. They are peculiarly 
fitted for other kinds of service : for instruction, for gentle, 
equable influence, for the guidance and edification of the 
Church. There is a diversity of gifts, each useful, and each 
serving a special function for the building up and compact- 
ing of the body. Xor is it ever right for one either to envy 
another his peculiar gifts, or to depreciate them. Let each 
seiwe to his utmost ability in his own peculiar way, so that it 
is the best he can do. But are you sure that you lack this 
gift of awakening power \ Or may you not have uncon- 
sciously fallen into one of many snares which the adversary 
has spread about this point \ There is, no doubt, quite a 
current feeling that this kind of work requires not only a 
peculiar, but a less respectable, kind of talent. May yon not 
unwittingly have come upon it \ Or, if not that, may you 
not have associated the idea of revival work with some 
extravagances which are disrelishable to your tastes, and so 
have come to an im willingness to labor for such a result I 
Or may you not have fallen into the habit of not looking 
for fruits, and of not gathering the results of your minis- 



CEXTEXAEY THOUGHTS. 



91 



terial work \ I cannot doubt that many pass through years 
of their ministry without seeing any visible effects from one 
or other of these reasons, rather than because God has 
withheld from them the requisite gifts. They might pos- 
sibly have brought many sheaves into the garner, but that 
they have been prevented gathering them by one of these 
snares. So much that is objectionable to good taste and 
delicate sensibilities often occurs in the manner of conduct- 
ing revival services, that it is not to be wondered at that 
sensible and refined people rather recoil at the thought of 
them than desire them ; and a minister of the same kind of 
organization and refinement experiences the same kind of 
recoil ; and then, for the same reason, there is an honest 
doubt whether the average revival does not at last do more 
harm than good, while there can be no reasonable doubt at 
all that many so-called extensive revivals are disastrous. 
Some are saved, but more are unfavorably impressed. 
2sow, what, under the circumstances, is the plain duty of the 
minister ? Can he, therefore, give up the idea of awakening 
men, and as many of them as possible ? Surely not. Such a 
course would soon bring the Church to an end. He must 
simply proceed, with all the power God has given him, in a 
legitimate and sensible method, to warn, entreat, and rouse 
his hearers to accept the invitations of the Gospel and be 
saved, and when his awakening appeals have produced their 
proper effect, he must, in every proper way, guide the awak- 
ened and penitent soul to his Saviour in the most direct 
manner possible. He is responsible for seeing that no 
improper methods, or hurtful and disreputable excitements, 
be permitted in the services of his Church : he is not called 
upon to resort to exceptionable methods. He may, and 
ought to, multiply means when there are signs that it would 



92 



CENT EN A RY THOUG HTS. 



be useful. It is his business to observe and know the symp- 
toms in his congregation, and to be governed by them in the 
matter and method of his work. His duty is plain and sim- 
ple — to preach the whole word of God in the most effective 
way possible to him, and garner the results with the most 
anxious and constant care. 

The question about stated revival meetings has become one 
of such importance that I desire still further to call attention 
to it. What is the duty of a minister with regard to special 
revival effort? Thus far I have endeavored to show what 
ought to be the habitual aim and method of preaching. 
When faithfully carried out, the Church will constantly feel 
its power. There will be constant signs of life. Each ser- 
mon will bear fruit. The watchful and earnest pastor will 
be garnering his sheaves each month the year round. That, 
with the constantly vigilant pastor, I have no doubt is the 
most wholesome condition for the Church. It is the thing 
to be aimed at. But even then there may come seasons for 
special efforts, when the Church and minister should rally 
all their power for wider immediate results. The Church, 
through all her history, has recognized such seasons of 
special effort as legitimate, and has reaped great harvests 
from them. But the matter is one of great delicacy and 
danger, and requires good judgment, as well as most con- 
scientious and religious handling. It is an easy thing to be 
moved by false motion, and to kindle a blaze with false fire. 
A perfunctory revival has in it the bad elements of every 
thing that is false. When the minister and people feel 
special hunger after God — when their, souls are intensely 
drawn out for sinners — when there are signs of deeper atten- 
tion — when the Gospel is producing marked effects — (and for 
■ell these the Church should constantly pray and the minister 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



constantly labor,) then let increased efforts be made, let the 
sermons, exhortations, and prayers be intensified and multi- 
plied, bnt even then let all the services be earnest and 
decorous, without aiming at novelty or extravagance. When 
God pours out his Spirit, and real power appears among the 
people, there is . but little danger of unseemly things occur- 
ring in the house of God, or incongruous with the most 
holy and sacred services. Crowds will gather — there will be 
some unusual excitement — firm hearts will be broken and 
smitten hearts will be healed, and many will change their 
course of life — but there will be nothing to offend the best 
taste. When the method is right and the power is from 
above there is no danger. All the harm comes from man- 
made revivals ; from the arts and tricks which get up false 
excitements, when in many cases, as we have reason to fear ? 
the influence is more human or diabolical than divine. 

What about the employment of outside helpers? This 
has become a real question among us. There can be no 
doubt that it is profitable for pastors, in the ordinary routine 
of their work, occasionally to exchange with neighboring 
pastors ; and to introduce to their pulpits other ministers 
of our own or sister denominations, with proper care that 
the invited or admitted visitor be a man of unimpeachable 
record. JSTo other, under any circumstances, should be ad- 
mitted to our pulpits. Too much care cannot be observed 
to protect both the sanctity and dignity of the sacred desk. 
No stranger unaccredited should be allowed therein. When 
a season of special interest appears, and there is an increase of 
services, it is proper to call in some neighboring pastor or 
ministerial helper. If care is taken to secure the right kind 
of aid, this is almost certain to help. But not every one will 
be a help. The greatest care and wisdom should be exer- 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



cised 3 and the pastor himself should in all cases keep steady 
hold of the reins. Xo one, unless under extraordinary cir- 
cumstances, should be permitted to take his place. Both for 
present and future effect the Church and the converts must 
recognize him as the leader and responsible head of the work, 
must look to him for guidance and direction, must respect 
his authority. He must feel that he is absolutely responsi- 
ble for what is done, and must, therefore, allow no one to su- 
persede him. This will strengthen and establish his influ- 
ence in the matter of husbanding the results. He should 
see to not only the ordering of the services, but should do 
much of the praying, exhortation, and preaching himself. 
But in all this he should be careful to keep close to his own 
Church, and give them to feel joint care and responsibility 
with himself, while recognizing his authority. He should 
exercise supreme watchfulness to prevent all wild-fire and 
all improper words and acts in his public services. A re- 
vival so conducted will be a lasting good, will leave the body 
healthy and sound, and will bring many into the kingdom 
who will abide in and strengthen the Church. 

What about evangelists I There are, no doubt, some true 
and useful evangelists. But the greatest care should be ob- 
served in employing them, and precisely similar rules should 
be observed in inviting them as are above stated. Professional 
evangelists should never be invited to get up a revival. 
When invited, it should be to work with and under the pas- 
tor, and should be because there are signs that God is work- 
ing among the people. He should not be permitted to in- 
troduce eccentricities and extravagances, which are evidently 
intended for sensational effect. Xo evangelist not well 
known and well accredited in his own Church, and well 
commended by his work, should ever be employed. A man 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



95 



who advertises himself as an evangelist, and drives his voca- 
tion as a business, giving prominence to money considera- 
tions, and requiring the pastor to surrender his church into his 
hands, and adopting exceptional methods, should be treated 
as a charlatan and fraud, and find no favor among us. The 
employment of roaming religious mendicants should be con- 
sidered a gross offense against decency and proper church 
order, and the offender ought to be held to answer to his 
conference. 

We must rescue revival work, which has always held such 
an important place in the Church, and especially in our own 
Church, from the disgrace into which it threatens to fall, and 
has, in some cases, fallen, by giving to it our best care, and 
imparting to it breadth, earnestness, depth, and dignity. It 
is our business and duty to ' awaken dead souls. We must 
court the gift. We must cultivate the holy art. We must 
eschew every counterfeit. We must not only not contribute 
to shams, but we must prevent them. A true revival is a 
great blessing to a Church, not only ministering comfort and 
joy to it, but imparting to it strength and dignity and tone. 
It is a blessing to the community, reforming and transform- 
ing it ; it is a blessing to our homes, deepening the religion 
of the household and saving our children. A spurious and 
shallow excitement is a manifold curse. More and more we 
must keep the holy fires burning, and with still greater vig- 
ilance we must set our faces against . all false fires. The 
Church can endure any strain that may come upon her from 
without if she be preserved whole and pure within ; but 
false methods, unsound doctrine, and superficial experience, 
if tolerated, must, soon or late, mar her beauty and destroy 
her power. Pastoral diligence and holy earnestness is God's 

method, and will not fail to bring out the full measure of 
7 



96 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



her strength. Let us discard every other trust, and remem- 
bering our high vocation as builders of the kingdom, let us 
be unintermittent in our efforts, expecting and seeking the 
blessing of God on each sermon, and a living interest in all 
the services of the Church throughout the year, gathering as 
we £o from month to month the fruits of our toil. The 
result will be better in the end, and thus, doing our duty 
with fidelity, there will come down upon us, whenever 
needed, glorious reviving showers, which will not be fol- 
lowed by fatal ebbings. The one thing is to cultivate the 
habit of working for immediate fruit and the habit of gar- 
nering the results. 

It is not enough that our sermons be awakening, indis- 
pensable as that is. If there are some who commit the mis- 
take of supposing they can be ministers without convincing 
and awakening, or while leaving that quality out of their 
sermons, there are doubtless some who make that quality so 
prominent as to omit every other. When they have brought 
a sinner to repentance they consider their work done. 
Henceforth they leave him to grow as the " wild ass's colt,"' 
to become what chance and natural bent may make him ; or, 
if they give him any hint, it is so inadequate, and often so 
misleading, that nothing might almost be as well. They 
are told that they must go to church, they must pray, they 
must keep from gross sins, they must keep their emotions in 
a lively condition, then all will be well— they will grow in 
grace, and fill up the measure of Christian life and duty. 
Occasionally their attention is called to special duties. Now 
all this is well, but it falls far short of adequate pastoral in- 
struction, and under it a Church can never become a fully 
developed Church. The tendency of such defective teach- 
ing is to produce dwarf Christians. The same result occurs 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



97 



when too much account is made of what is called religious 
enjoyment. Many Christians, whole communities of Chris- 
tians, are left to. infer that the whole function of the Church 
is to minister to their enjoyment — that the sermon is for 
this — that if it fails at this point its hearing was time mis- 
spent. It matters nothing how shallow, if it stirs their emo- 
tions. It may contain no instruction ; but if, in tone or inci- 
dent, it makes them feel comfortable or elicits a tear, it is 
accounted great, and marks the day a red-letter day. 

There are some that fall even lower than this in their 
estimate of what a sermon ought to be. With them it is 
merely a faultless composition, or a jingle of euphonies or 
beautiful pictures, or rich and learned discourse, or fine wit, 
or any thing to pass the hour pleasantly away and leave the 
congregation in an admiring state of mind, pleased with 
themselves, pleased with their church, pleased with the 
preacher, pleased with every thing. The preacher is popu- 
lar, the congregation is delighted, the house is overflowing. 
What more ought a sermon to be expected to accomplish ? 
Is it any wonder that Churches are weak and Christianity 
turned into doubt and ridicule when people are fed on such 
wind and husks, and have so little brain that they think it 
bread ? Even children can enditre milk ; but what are those 
who are fed on the foam of rose-water, and cannot even en- 
dure that, if not sweetened with compliment and flattery. 
Pretty sermons, exquisite passages uttered to rapturous pews, 
without a thought or a word to stir the conscience or awaken 
reflection ; with nothing of God, or eternity, or duty, or ear- 
nest work, or any thing else to guide manhood amid the 
breakers to noble character and worthy deeds — O prosti- 
tuted pulpit ! O profaned temple of God ! O imbecile 
venders of bubbles and trinkets to abused though oft- 



98 



CEWTENA R Y THO I' GETS. 



admiring pews! how long shall such infamy be possible 
under the sacred guise of religion \ 

It is in whole a product of a failure to conceive what 
preaching is for. A moments thought of the true end for 
which God established it would crimson with shame the 
audience who would willingly listen, and the hireling who 
should rend, such petty impertinences in the temple of God 
as preaching. If the thought should dawn on him in the 
midst of his despicable performances. *• Why am I here I " and 
he should see himself as God sees him. it would smite him with 
dumbness ! It is sometimes said the pulpit has lost its power. 
It is a marvel that it has not ! What it has suffered from 
pretty nothings and bombastic, pompous stupidity and heart- 
less twaddle, would have sunk it beneath contempt were it 
not that, despite all this, it is divine ; and though intermit- 
tently, and with many obstructions, the stream — often colored 
with the impurities of earthly pools and morasses — still flows 
from beneath the throne. But there is still enough of true 
preaching to make the pulpit a fountain of life to the world, 
and enough great, earnest, conscientious men in the pulpit 
who appreciate the dignity and demands of their calling to 
preserve the Church from dishonor and decay. 

TTe come now to inquire into the qualities needed for 
constructing and compacting the body. If souls, awakened, 
grew spontaneously into fullness of grace and Christian char- 
acter, we might give ourselves no further concern about 
them. Having started them on the way. we might safely 
leave them to themselves to prosecute the remainder of their 
journey. But I need not say that this is not the case. Our 
work is then but begun. If nor the most important part, still 
not a less important part, remain.-. The birth of the infant is 
the first stage of the man. but it is not manhood. Our function 



C EX TEX A R Y TRO UGHTS. 



99 



is to build men. Two things are needed to that end : to 
remove things which obstruct growth, and to contribute that 
which promotes growth. Let us consider those separately. 

First, we must remove obstructions. It is true that when 
a soul is divinely awakened and converted — born from above — 
it becomes possessed of a new principle of life. And where 
there is life the natural order is growth — growth from the 
germ to the full corn in the ear, or to perfection. But growth, 
even, has its conditions : there must be no obstructions — - 
there must be nourishment. "We are set to posit life in the 
dead souls, and then to guard it and minister nutrition to it, 
that the life may grow to perfection. The truth by which 
souls are begotten must still be the aliment by which souls 
grow : born of the truth, they must be fashioned by it. 
The quality of the food will determine the quality of the 
development. We are largely responsible for the spiritual 
status of the Church ; it becomes what we make it ; is 
dwarfed or grows into beauty and power through us. 
Changing the figure, we are guardians and keepers of the 
flock. "We are set to keep away destructive wolves that 
would destroy it, and to lead it forth into living pastures. 
"We are responsible for its safety and for its healthful 
keeping. 

The Church is peculiarly, distinctively, the people of the 
King. Its duty is not limited to the preaching of the Gos- 
pel, to the communion of saints, and the winning of souls. 
These it ought to do and must do ; but there are other 
things that should not be left undone. Christ reigns in. and 
through the Church, and the Church in him. Wherever 
the battle is waged between him and his enemies, there the 
Church should appear in the contest. She should furnish 
the thinkers who can defend the truth in the arena of 



100 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



thought. She should be masterful in the power of trained 
intellect. She should see that her own leaders are foremost 
in knowledge. She should lead the world in benevolent en- 
terprise. Hers should be the schools, hers the enterprise, 
hers the benevolence, hers the inspiration and the heroism 
which lead the march of progress, and give to the world 
the true and practical interpretation of the anthem with 
which the angelic host celebrated the birth of our King : 
" Glory to G-od in the highest, and on earth peace, good 
will toward men." 

We are set for the defense of the kingdom. ~Nor is this a 
small part of our calling. It is, and always has been, and 
always will be, beleagured by active and powerful enemies, 
who are intent on its destruction. They are fecund of in- 
ventions against it ; they are forever sapping and mining 
about its walls ; they will, if possible, overthrow the faith 
of the very elect. We have taught them doubt ; we have 
trained them to questionings. They come forth to meet us 
with learned argument ; they quote science against us ; they 
decry our facts ; they point to our mistakes ; they are bold 
and defiant. We must meet them. We must deal with 
their objections with fairness. They have learning ; we 
must meet them with superior learning. We must be able 
to evince the reasonableness of our faith against all comers. 
We must answer their questionings. We have reached a 
time when nothing will abide which cannot be rationally de- 
fended. The reign of authority is forever past. The ques- 
tion will never again be, " Who says it ? " but, " Why does he 
say it ? " We must be able to adduce the sufficient why. We 
must champion truth, and not dogmas or traditions. To be 
equal to the demand, we must be men of broad and accurate 
knowledge, and have the fashion of close and consequent 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



101 



thinking, and clear and intelligible utterance. We must be 
able to separate the dross from the gold, and clearly to dis- 
cern what things should be taught, and why they should be 
taught. Our sermons must be trenchant and convincing, so 
as to dispel doubt and command assent. The pulpit must 
he respectable in order to command respect. We must avoid 
the folly of setting ourselves against science, and of decrying 
it, and the greater folly of speaking of matters of which we 
know nothing. Become masters, and it will appear that 
you are such. Your calling requires that you should be 
teachers ; teachers of the deepest things ; teachers of the 
foolish and the learned. You are nothing if you are not 
teachers. You must, therefore, be able to teach. You must 
be broad enough to know the age, to understand what it is 
thinking about, what the perplexities of mind are, what the 
real wants and troubles are that embarrass your congrega- 
tion, the young and the old ; and you must be deep enough 
to give relief. Let us settle it once for all, that we have 
come to an age when men will no longer hear us if we be 
not competent to instruct and help them. Even the loyalty 
of the Church will not long endure the strain of imbecility 
in its pulpit. Fools and quacks will have to go to some 
other market to vend their wares. With its eternal truth, 
its vast and mighty themes, its divine authority, its close 
and profound relations to the deepest welfare of men, its in- 
finite motives, the grandeur of its mission, the pulpit ought 
to be the greatest fulcrum in the world, the mightiest lever ; 
ought to move men more profoundly, and lift them into 
loftier sublimities, than any other agency on earth. It can 
be nothing less than a reproach if its sermons be not grand 
and mighty speech, worthy of fully developed men, and 
worthy to be heard by such. 



102 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



But, passing from this point, I come now to consider the 
sermon as a means of spiritual culture. After repelling as- 
saults and throwing up ramparts of defense against enemies, 
the pulpit must furnish the kind of stimulant and instruc- 
tion that will develop the grandest type of Christian charac- 
ter. In order to this it must be ribbed and buttressed with 
strong, wholesome doctrine. It is good for the mind to be 
fortified with sound doctrine. There is too little doctrinal 
preaching in these times. Both the mental and moral life 
profit by the tonic and ozone of strong diet. It creates 
tissue and develops manly strength and ruggedness. It is 
possible to continue milk diet too long, and protract the 
baby state on into the years of manhood, which is monstrous. 
Meat is better for muscle, and men want muscle. It is a 
good thing to grapple with great questions, and wholesome 
to have strong convictions founded on strong reasons. The 
doctrines of revelation are God's prepared diet for souls. 
They are also the ladders of truth on which we climb into 
the higher and purer spiritual atmospheres. If we would 
have strong Christians we must make much of doctrines. 
It is sometimes said that people do not like doctrinal preach- 
ing, and the word says, " The time will come when they will 
not endure sound doctrine." Must we, therefore, omit the 
preaching of the truth ? Every thing depends on the man- 
ner of doctrinal preaching. If dry and dull, people will not 
like it. But why should it be dry and dull \ It is God's 
truth, that ought to set us on fire in the unfolding of it ; 
and if we are on fire the people will be. I believe there is 
at present a special demand that we should return to the old 
paths in this particular. It is the right, as it is the interest, 
of our people that they should be taught the whole mind of 
God: that they should be led to the heights of the grandest 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



103 



and to the depths of the profoimdest truths. It will be, that, 
by seeing God in his thought and plan, they will come to 
think and feel like God. The vision will transform them. 
" Beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord," they 
will be " changed into the same image from glory to glory." 
The struggle with and effort to grasp great truths makes 
great souls. Men grow broader and deeper in propor- 
tion to the truths they take into them. Mere sentiment 
engenders feebleness. A sense of ignorance, where there 
ought to be knowledge, produces not only the feeling of 
shame, but uncertainty and insecurity. Intelligent con- 
viction is the best security against fickleness. The best 
habit of the soul is the habit of hunger after truth and the 
relish of the truth. We must create that habit by making 
much of truth, and by so studying it ourselves that we can 
present it with clearness and attractiveness to the people ; 
so fed, they will grow strong and shapely in the house of God. 
This does not mean that we are to be bigots, or narrow ; but 
simply that we are to find out what truth is and teach it in 
its truest forms. We must learn the art of fascinating our 
congregations with robust, manly discourse, and raise them 
into an atmosphere where dilettanteism and mere sentiment- 
alism will be an offense and disgust ; which means simply 
that we must learn the art of thinking truth clearly and 
speaking it forcibly; or, better yet, the art of feeling the 
inspiration of the truth, the love of it, and of making others 
feel as we do. Two words contain it all — all the mystery 
of securing the attention of people — earnestness, master- 
fulness. 

But our work is not yet done. We work for an end ; we 
must still keep that in mind. We work to build the king- 
dom. We must not only awaken men, guide them to 



104 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



the Saviour, bring tliem into the kingdom, ward off their 
enemies, and ground them in troth of right thinking and 
doctrines ; but we must show them what they are to do 
and how to do it, and inspire them to do it. This is quite as 
important as any part of our work. We must be careful to 
show them that religion does not mean simpty, or chiefly, 
belief in certain doctrines, or loyalty to churchly order, or 
personal enjoyment, or great professions, or a narrow round 
of formal duties. Here has been all along an evil among 
us. We must more and more show them that it- means 
work ; or, better yet, that it means the truest and most 
magnificent manhood, built into the grandest and most 
magnificent life — means being and doing. God demands 
that his children shall be royal children. We must point out 
and insist on all manly virtues ; a real, rUgged character, into 
which is taken every thing that is excellent, and from which 
is excluded all that is low and narrow and mean and selfish. 
We must constantly hold up the ideal, until its image shall 
bum itself into the souls of the people, as the synonym of 
Christian. If our teachings and our Christianity do not 
produce the grandest sort of men and women in all elements 
of nobility they fall short of their work, and proclaim some- 
thing wanting. A Christian rightly made— made according 
to the pattern of the truth, which we are set to preach — 
must be anywhere and every-where the manliest of men : 
true to the core ; honest as death ; faithful, brave ; a light in 
the home, in the market, at the hustings, every-where, as 
much as in the house of God on the holy day. 

We must teach the art of making ideal homes: homes 
where love reigns — homes where fathers and mothers under- 
stand the responsibilities they have assumed to themselves in 
becoming parents ; where children shall be trained in honor 



CENTENA R Y THO UGHTS. 



105 



and virtue ; where education and refinement and piety shall 
be conspicuous ; out of which shall go worthy wives and 
citizens ; homes where the mind is recognized as well as the 
body ; where the soul is provided for as carefully as the 
stomach; where along with the work and toil, cheerfully 
borne, there is the elixir of high hope and divine aspiration ; 
homes that have a celestial light shining in them, and a divine 
order and radiance about them. Christian fathers must be 
taught to be something else than mere toilers, and Christian 
mothers something else than drudges. There is a better way. 

We must be more faithful in teaching the duties of stew- 
ardship — in other words, the ideal of right living. Perhaps 
the greatest failure has been at this point. The religion we 
have taught has been separated too much from the common 
every-day life — a religion for the sanctuary and the sabbath, 
the closet and the prayer-meeting. It would be false to the 
truth to say that such a religion is of no good, or such 
teaching of no value ; but truth requires us to say, that it is 
inadequate, and if not misleading, at least falls far short of 
the mark. Our function is to build the whole life after the 
divine idea ; to take youth at its threshold and teach it how 
to grow in symmetry and beauty ; to teach it the lessons of 
early piety, of dutifulness to parents, and of respect for age 
and things sacred ; to inculcate industry and sobriety, studious- 
ness and strict moral deportment ; to point out the snares 
and dangers which beset it, and to win it by kindness and 
gentleness to the closest confidence and reverent respect. 
Whoever is successful in building men must have the art of 
beginning with childhood. We must learn the potency of 
polite and cordial manners, and the winningness of gener- 
ous and gentle words and well-timed speech. To do this 
nothing is like sincerity and genuine earnestness and affec- 



106 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



tion ; nothing so fatal as moroseness and ill-judged severity, 
or sanctimoniousness. Study the art of bringing the chil- 
dren of the Church into the kingdom. Do not depend on 
the sabbath-school. It will do much, but it cannot do your 
work. God has made you keeper of the souls of the children, 
and will hold you responsible for the charge. 

But your chief function is with the fathers and mothers 
and grown-up people. Here you need the utmost skill and 
energy. The burden of your work is to point out to them 
the way, and teach them the art, and make them fall in love 
with the theory, of right living. No one dare speak to them 
as you dare, no one can lead them as you can. You need 
to be wise in employing this power. God has set you over 
them as overseers, not masters, to instruct, admonish, com- 
fort, exhort, and persuade with all sympathy and long-suf- 
fering. They have the right as well as the need to look to 
you for guidance in all matters that pertain to duty and 
spiritual culture, that they may be perfect and thoroughly 
furnished to every good word and work. They must be 
educated out of selfishness into philanthropy, and charity, 
and broad-minded benevolence ; must be made to feel that 
they are not their own masters as to the use of their influence, 
or time, or talent, or money, or any thing they possess ; but 
that One is their Master in heaven. They must be taught 
that they are not here simply to serve themselves and their 
own, but to feel a brother's care and sympathy for all 
God's children ; they must be taught to look upon it not as 
a burden but a joy to be accounted worthy to share in 
helping the needy, " to take joyfully the spoiling of their 
goods ; " must be taught that industry and thrift and wise 
forethought about money getting is a Christian duty, because 
money increases their power for good ; must be taught not 



CEXTEXARY THOUGHTS. 



107 



to hoard it for selfish ends, but to use it wisely in doing good ; 
must be taught that to do good is the chief end of life ; must 
be taught to be on the alert, looking out where they can con- 
tribute counsel, or influence, or money for the help of the 
needy and furtherance of the right ; must be taught not to 
wait for opportunities nor to shirk opportunities, but to hunt 
them out for the most heroic and valorous duties and self- 
sacrifice ; must be taught that the Church is not an alien, but 
a part of the divine order for this life, as much as the farm, 
or store, or profession, or home is ; that it is the highest and 
most important part of all their blessings, and should have 
their first and most loving and faithful care. 

All this you will see and feel implies much, but it still 
falls short of exhausting your function as builders of the 
kingdom. You are not simply preachers and priests, you are 
pastors. That implies discipline and watchcare ; the careful 
looking after the erring and straying, the stimulating of the 
drooping and laggard, and the helping of the halting in all 
private ways of instruction. If the work seems almost for- 
midable, you have only to remember always what it is for 
and who has appointed you to this office, and the greatness 
of the result if you are faithful. You are set to build the 
divine kingdom — to build men. You are working for eter- 
nity. The fruits of your toil are not to appear only here or 
chiefly here, but yonder, in the immortal ages. They are to 
appear here indeed, in the making of a glorious Church ; in 
the making of the truest and noblest men and women ; in 
the making of beautiful homes ; in the making of the grand- 
est humanity ; in building upon earth a glorious civilization 
— a celestial kingdom : but your chief work is to appear in 
the beyond, in the everlasting ages, when the trophies of your 
toil are crowned, and afterward as they progress in eternal 



108 



CENTEX A RY THO UGHTS. 



glory. Keep in mind the end of all your labor: this will 
stimulate to high endeavor, and the use of the right means, 
and will save you from growing weary in well-doing, or from 
resorting to low subterfuges, or from content with imperfect 
results. Let us gird ourselves anew for the great work, and 
resolve on having a great Church of the living God ; not a 
drove of camp followers merely, nor an ambulance army that 
cannot be depended on when God counts up his host against 
his enemies, nor that need to be carried and held up lest they 
grow tired, or cowardly, or traitors by the way : not such, but 
a glorious host of God's elect who shall snuff the battle afar 
off ; who, armed with the panoply divine, shall be seen in the 
thick of the fray with their banners uplift ever; who shall* 
stand, like the beaten anvil to the stroke, in the stormiest and 
darkest times ; who shall be sublime every-where — in honor 
and dishonor, in peril and in triumph, at home, in the mar- 
ket, at the hustings, when alone, when in the crowd — always 
a glorious host of redeemed and regenerate souls. 

How can we accomplish this ? Not in our own strength. 
We must have God with us and we must have God in us. 
We must be sublime men and we must be divine men. We 
must live above the world, above its petty ambitions — in an 
atmosphere of heavenly thought and heavenly feeling and 
heavenly motion. We must be studious of all knowledge ; we 
must be rich in truth and robust in devotion ; utter and entire 
in consecration to our work. Thus panoplied, though men, we 
shall be more than mere men ; Eternal Power will be with us 
and in us, and men shall know it, and the great work will go 
forward, until the world is filled with God and his kingdom 
shall possess the earth. We build our part to-day, and lay 
down the trowel. Some other will take it up and build on 
us. Let us see to it that our part in the wall is well laid in 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



109 1 



beauty and in strength ; that when the Master-builder returns 
to inspect our work we may hear him say, " Well done, thou 
£Ood and faithful servant : thou hast been faithful over a few 
things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into 
the joy of thy lord." It has been well said, " The enemies of 
the Messiah's kingdom are yet many, and great conquests are 
yet to be made before his kingship shall be universally ac- 
knowledged. Our duty points to the field of strife, to the 
conflict with every form of evil, to the grand endeavors of 
the Church militant to conquer the world for Christ, to the 
avenues of mercy open on every hand. If our religion is 
restricted by a narrow conception of what Christ requires — 
if we think only of his precepts, our personal redemption 
through his blood, or the joys of spiritual communion — if, in 
short, we rejoice in him as our Saviour and not as our King — 
we shall fail to realize the nature and extent of our obliga- 
tions, and be but poor servants in his cause. Our first indi- 
vidual duty is entire devotion to the will and service of Him 
whom we invite to reign in and rule over us. This rule is 
never more complete than our consecration ; indeed, it is fear- 
fully impaired by slight disobedience : we cannot serve two 
masters and be loyal to either. Our second duty is, to make 
the most of ourselves according to the opportunities that 
God gives us, that our service may be as broad, as varied, and 
as effective as it is possible to make it. 

"It is matter of just regret when men highly endowed, 
liberally educated, and inducted into positions of responsi- 
bility, so err in their methods and aims that nothing worthy 
or enduring is accomplished. And certainly no position is 
higher or more responsible than the Christian ministry, 
since none involves interests so momentous, or power so stu- 
pendous or beneficent. The ministry is a primary and indis- 



110 



C EX TEX A R T THO UQ HTS. 



pensable agency of Christianity, the leading and aggressive 
force which unites and conserves all others. The human 
agency is exalted beyond conception by its association with a 
divine co-efficient. But still the highest grade and attain- 
ment of the human agent is no less essential to the highest 
power and success. Good natural abilities and gifts are in- 
dispensable ; early training and scholarship are a powerful 
auxiliary ; but intellectual weight and pulpit effectiveness are 
within the reach of all who can lay any valid claim to a divine 
call. Aside from a thorough spiritual foundation, intellectual 
grip, and judicious toil, success in the ministry will depend 
upon the special pulpit power which a man attains. This 
confers weight and respectability upon all his other offices 
and functions. And the pulpit requires for its vindication as 
the prime agency in the maintenance and growth of Chris- 
tianity, what has been defined or comprehended asfortiter in 
re and suaviter in jnodo, or strength of discourse and grace 
of delivery. But a class of ministers aim at a tertium quid 
— a third something, which may be defined as suaviter in 
re — a supreme attempt to say agreeable and pleasing things. 
Sometimes it is manifested in such profusion of imagery as 
obscures the thought ; sometimes in the lighter graces of 
diction, such as alliteration, antithesis, or in a mere studied 
cadence and modulation. It is not difficult to designate 
men who have had every opportunity to become strong and 
opulent in the pulpit, and who gave early promise of the 
highest ability, who have lost their grasp of thought and 
personal power by frittering away their energies in such little 
frivolities. We need the men to stand abreast the ao-e, and 
to hold the centers of intellectual activity. Because some 
men of prominence have accepted the enthusiastic applause 
of the superficial crowd, in aiming at 'filling the church,' 



C EXTEXAR Y THO UG HTS. 



Ill 



rather than reaching the intelligent few, and holding the 
masses through them as a medium. The Gospel in its sim- 
plicity, fullness, and entirety will hold intelligent men if its 
principles are expounded and demonstrated, but if worked 
up into rhetorical bubbles it is not edifying. Such men may 
4< draw ;" but they do not draw to Christ. 

" But there is another extreme to be avoided. Some able 
preachers exclude themselves from our best pulpits for the 
lack of grace. Their sermons are baldly plain. Their man- 
ner is abrupt, heavy, or uncouth. Their pronunciation is 
antiquated, or their illustrations commonplace. They are 
too demonstrative or too prolix. Such men need to investi- 
gate the occasion of that unpopularity of which they are so 
conscious and so impatient. But that men may be strong 
and successful ministers with very little conventional polish, 
many of the older ministers were a living demonstration. 
Some of them, who left the farm or the shop at eighteen to 
enter the itinerancy, became editors, college presidents, or 
famous preachers. But they had intense earnestness and 
indomitable perseverance ; and for the rest, piety and good 
judgment sufficed, with such knowledge as they could com- 
pass. 

" We must not, however, despise the emotions. There are 
two extremes to be avoided : On the one hand, the extreme 
of addressing ourselves wholly to the intellect ; on the other, 
the extreme of addressing ourselves wholly to the emotions. 
Man is both a creature of intellect and feeling, and deeper 
yet, and underlying both, of a conscience — a deep, all-gov- 
erning, moral nature. All these sides of his nature are open 
to us. Many of our hearers have too little intellect to com- 
prehend or feel the force of persuasions or motives addressed 

to the reason. As well reason with a tomtit or chipmunk. 
8 



112 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



They will not comprehend your arguments. They will look 
at you with the dull and stolid look of oxen as your ponder- 
ous logic grinds out premise and conclusion. There will not 
be enough in it for them to excite wonder. To reach them 
there is no resort but somehow to touch their feelings. If 
you can move their nerves, you have won them. Unseal the 
fountains of their tears, and they become your willing cap- 
tives. You may now, with the skill which, as physicians of 
souls, you ought to have, develop in them a religious power. 
There are others who can be reached only through the reason ;, 
still others must be captured through the conscience ; while 
not a few must be won, if won at all, through the ima^ina- 
tion, or the aesthetic faculty. It is because of this diversity in 
the hearers that all varieties of power are useful in the pulpit 
— the weak and the strong, the intellectual and the emo- 
tional, the passive and the imaginative. We are sent to save 
all, and the instrument must be adapted to the specific case. 
While we may admit the superior quality of one class to an- 
other, and the higher tone of instrumentality to be employed, 
we must not despise the infirm. While the great seine must 
be used for the great fish, we must not forget that there are 
minnows for which we must use the dip-net. The dip-net 
should be a good one. It is possible for the great seine to 
become a dip-net sometimes. The sum of it all is, that we 
must learn to employ all possible forces for saving men ; all 
persuasive arts, addressed to the feelings, the fancy, the in- 
tellect, the conscience ; the ponderous argument, the sublime 
description, the awakening appeal, the pathetic anecdote, the 
persuasive entreaty. If by any of these we may win souls 
for our Lord, it will not be asked whether the instrument 
was this or that. 

" All this does not mean that there is to be no diversity — 



C EX TEX A R Y THO UGHTS. 



113 



that we must all be built on the same model. Diversity is a 
divine law. Diversity among the people demands diversity 
in the pulpit. But the diversity in the pulpit includes no 
triflers, no tricksters, no comedians, no striped jackets and 
pointed hats. It fs a diversity of genius, but not a diversity 
of aims ; a diversity of expression, but not a diversity of con- 
secration; a diversity in which all the varieties, each in its 
own way, seeks to save souls. We are not to aim to be like 
others, but rather to be ourselves — emulators, but not imita- 
tors. But there are varieties which are always out of place 
in the pulpit. ]So one has the right, because such varieties 
belong to him naturally, to defile the holy place with them. 
Let him be natural and use his natural gifts in a manner be- 
fitting the work in which he is engaged." 

A somew T hat quaint but an earnest and useful member of 
our fraternity has well written : — 

" Pulpit men, like others, are individualized by the keenest 
contrasts. No one expects two of us to be alike, any more 
than he expects two quaggas or two hills to be alike. While 
we are one, we are, nevertheless, many. We are one as the 
forest, yet diversified as the trees. We have our own idioc- 
rasy, and law of development, and style of thinking, and 
tone of voice, and way of saying ideas. Peculiarity is as 
necessary as identity. Pulpits must differ so long as educa- 
tion, talents, tact, temperament, manhood, and souls differ. 
Ministers have been divided into schools. While that may 
be well enough, it seems to puzzle critics to tell to which 
distinctive school some preachers belong. We must all be- 
long somewhere, although I do not suppose we can have our 
own choice. Of necessity there must be a great many pulpit 
types, and many varieties in each type. There are the tech- 
nical, the philosophical, and the grandiloquous type. There 
are also the intuitional, the mystical and rhapsodic, the 
tragic, the eclectic, and other types. These are all more or 



114 



CENTENAR Y THO UGHTS. 



less intellectual, spiritual, and useful, but they differ so much 
that it is impossible for all to come under the same law of 
work. However, the pulpit is large, so it has a place for all : 
for the man of curves and tangents, and also for the gentle- 
man of embroidery and fringe ; for the ponderous scholar of 
Hebrew points and Greek particles and jots and tittles, as 
well as for him of aesthetic tastes and elocutionary grace. 

"Nature believes in giants and pigmies, and in all the sizes 
between. One man is a whole orchestra in himself ; another 
is only a jew's-harp. Please don't blame the harp for not 
being an organ. It did not make itself. Why should the 
pulpit not have its share of little men? There are plenty 
of little men in the pews. There are little men among the 
lawyers and doctors and mechanics and editors and authors 
and reviewers ; and if heaven is full, there will be some little 
men there. 

"Variety is natural. We must just make the best of it. It 
was never meant that we should all be alike. God under- 
stands what he is about when he enriches every kingdom 
with diversity. The law of variety is as much his will as 
any other law. It works every-where. An eagle does not 
take naturally to walking round a farmer's door-step : a 
rooster does. A turkey would make a sony figure in trying 
to wheel away from the cliffs of the Andes, but a condor 
feels at home sailing above the dome of Chimborazo and 
round the volcano of Coquimba." 

A paramount requisite is, that the minister preach the 
word of God and the doctrine of the Book. He only builds 
on the Book who builds in and with the word of truth. It 
is the Gospel we are sent to preach, not science ; not crude 
opinions about science ; not the little nothings of our fancies ; 
not bright cullinffs from the fields of literature : not theories 
and crotchets and quiddities of one kind and another, to ex- 
cite wonder or admiration ; none of these, or other fables of 
human invention ; but the incorruptible word of God : the 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



115 



doctrines which Ave find imbedded in and overspreading his 
revelations, and exhibited in the lives of his saints there re- 
corded. These, and whatever will help to establish, illustrate, 
and enjoin them, must be the substance of every message. 
This leaves us the whole field of truth for research and in- 
vestigation and use, in one form or another. "We must bring 
all our knowledge and all our art to serve the divine word, 
and make it the hammer to break the heart, or the bread 
to feed the heart, or the medium of power to sanctify the 
heart. We must preach the word of God as final, conclusive, 
absolute authority, from which there is and can be no appeal. 
"We must employ our richest learning and best gifts in the 
most masterful way possible to find out its meaning ; but in 
most cases that is plain and simple ; most of the discussions 
employed about meanings are in the interest of confusing 
the reader and misleading him. Taking the simple meaning 
as it appears to an intelligent reader, as a rule we are to en- 
force it with all our learning and zeal as the everlasting and 
authoritative truth of God. Do not think you can improve 
it. Be not anxious to keep parts of it back lest it will 
offend. Do not imagine that God has sent you to modify 
or mitigate it, lest it will hurt. Preach in love and ear- 
nestness the truth as he has given it, the whole truth, and 
nothing but the truth: delve into the rich mine and bring 
out the precious ingots and nuggets, and give them to the 
people — the entire wealth. He knows the human heart, and 
he knows what the truth is for, and what it will do, and you 
may safely trust him. Be not anxious to apologize for it. 
It will take care of itself. Only be sure that you get the 
truth in its meaning and spirit, and lay it on the souls of men 
to work the work of God. He will take care of it and make 
it a power unto salvation. 



116 



CENTEX ART THOUGHTS. 



Having said that the function of the Gospel is to build 
men, in connection with building the divine kingdom, we 
desire to emphasize the point : the divine kingdom is a 
kingdom not simply of men, but of divinely-built men — 
men made in the divine image, and therefore made a divine 
commonwealth. This is no fable, or empty pretense. That 
the Gospel does build divine men is one of the most patent 
facts there is. It is a fact not simply known in the con- 
sciousness of the believer, but attested to observers. Be- 
lievers, with various degrees of certitude, know it — they 
have the witness in themselves ; they also make it manifest 
to others. That there are many in the Churches who are 
not divinely built — not in the kingdom at all, we are con- 
strained to admit ; there are many who are no credit to us 
as instruments ; but, after admitting all this, it remains that 
there is a true and glorious divine seed in the earth — men 
and women who know God, and have God in them. The 
world, despite its carping, knows it well. They are neither 
few nor scarce in the Churches : men and women who know 
the secret of a living faith, whose souls are daily nourished 
from invisible springs, who live lives of purity and self- 
sacrifice, who are in close and constant sympathy with the 
Redeemer of the world. Thousands in lowly and unosten- 
tatious walks, and obscure and humble homes, carry the 
King's signet in their hearts. The Gospel you preach does 
save. ~Ro man can take this boast from us so long as we are 
able to show our witnesses, not in the word of their testi- 
mony merely, but in their witnessing lives, and in their 
triumphant deaths. Men sometimes point with derision at so- 
called Christians — the mean and unworthy of our fellowship — 
and taunt us because they are not better than themselves. 
They parade a failure which among themselves would be 



C EN TEN A R Y THO UGHTS. 



117 



considered a jest, as in a Christian a damning stain, and so it 
is. Tims they bear testimony, even in the infirmities which 
they blazon as our reproach, to the prevailing purity and 
characteristic" integrity and nobility of our divine brother- 
hood. We would not have it otherwsie. Let it forever 
be our glory, that no man who bears the Christian name 
can be guilty of the minor faults even, or live the life which, 
among unchristian men, would be accounted excusable or 
even exemplary. We thank the world for recognizing the 
standard. But when will they turn from their reproaches 
on account of the confessedly unworthy and exceptional, to 
take note of those who give constant and sublime proof of 
motives and principles and supports which are not earthly? 
When will they ask themselves and wait for the answer : 
what would these Christians be without the inspiration 
they get from their religion ; and what would they them- 
selves be, and what would the world be, without the in- 
fluence of the Church w r hich they affect to despise ? When 
will they, in the midst of their hot revilings, stop to con- 
sider the debt they owe Christianity for the aegis which it 
spreads over their homes, their liberties, and their lives ? 

Let us remember, for our encouragement, that it is not 
the only work we are doing, when we win converts and see 
individuals and homes transformed by our Gospel ; but, 
behind that, we propagate influences in the homes and over 
the lives and practices of those who "wonder and despise 
and perish; " that saves society from universal ruin ; that 
we build dikes which prevent corruption from inundating the 
world ; that the cry which we raise makes the most daring 
hesitate, and arrests thousands in their excesses ; that thus 
we help the world, even when we fail to completely Chris- 
tianize it. Were we not here with divine authority, and w^ere 



lis 



CENTENAR Y THO UGH TS. 



it not that, somehow, despite their pretenses to the con- 
trary, men do believe this, who, nevertheless, refuse to hear 
us, they themselves would be carried away by the flood, and 
all the precious things in the world would perish in the 
deluge of lust and crime. Let history bear witness, and let 
the condition of unchristian nations teach us. The very 
despisers of Christianity, if their mad insanity could prevail 
to obliterate the Church, would soon, in the overflowing of 
calamities they could not endure, hasten to repair the awful 
loss by its restoration. Let the never-to-be forgotten Reign 
of Terror in France bear witness. 

I ought not to pass from this point without further grate- 
ful recognition of what has been done in this direction. Man 
is naturally selfish. It must be no ordinary power which 
moves a man when he comes to live for others, when he 
transcends his own family and adopts humanity ; when 
especially he comes to labor and sacrifice willingly and 
cheerfully for those whom he never saw — of the far-off 
nations of the world and for generations yet unseen. That 
is a sublime achievement. Let us appreciate it : that our 
time is becoming rich with examples of this kind in men who 
pour out their hundreds and thousands, and not a few their 
millions, for humanity. A limited number have been taken 
into the mount — more will follow — a little on, one will be- 
come a thousand, and then will grow up a race who will 
adopt the race, and the wealth of the world will be laid 
upon the altar of humanity. And let us not forget, nor 
permit others to forget, that these fruits are not earth-born. 
They grow upon a divine root. The Christianity which so 
many in these days affect to despise, and which, in their mad 
frenzy, they would relegate to oblivion as a thing of the 
past, is that which has made the homes and civilization and 



CEXTEXARY THOUGHTS. 



110 



institutions which have nourished them. The breast they 
smite is the breast that bore them — they raven and tear the 
paps that gave them suck. But their rage will be in vain, 
and humanity' will be spared the horror of their trickery — 
their names will perish. To contradict their prophecy of evil 
against God and his Christ, their very malice will build the 
walls they seek to demolish, and a new-born race will rise 
to put new crowns on the head of their maligned Lord. What 
has been will be — their desires will come to naught. They 
will obstruct, but it will be in vain. Look abroad. Who is 
the mighty builder to-day ? Who is it whose name, all the 
earth over, is a tower of strength ? Who is it the nations are 
waiting for ? Who is it that holds the destiny of the race 
in his hand ? Who is it that shuts and no man can open, 
and opens and no man can shut? Alexander and Caesar 
and Napoleon founded empires by the sword, and they 
perished. Who is this that builds an empire in the hearts 
of men, which shall last while the sun and moon endure ? 
Let the ends of the world answer — let every tongue speak. 
Can any doubt what the answer will be ? 

When will infidels learn that, however the vicious may 
praise them, all the good both detest and fear them as con- 
tagion and death ? In what societies are their names cher- 
ished ? What mothers teach their children to revere them 
as guides and benefactors? Who talks of Yoltaire, of 
Robespierre, of Paine ? Who, a generation hence, will pro- 
nounce the names that have blazoned their infamy before 
this generation ? When humanity counts up its benefac- 
tors, and generations follow generations to fill their urns 
with loving incense, who will bring grateful tears to the 
graves of those who have spent their lives in defaming 
Christ? Do they in their madness imagine that even the 



120 



CEXTEXARY THOUGHTS. 



leprous gang of their admirers have any faith in them ? Do 
they imagine that when they rob humanity of the safeguards 
of virtue, and blot out the aspirations of hope, they are to 
win its gratitude ? There is, alas ! sorrow and sin enough 
now — enough, despite all the ameliorating influence of Chris- 
tian teaching ; enough with all the inspirations of Christian 
hope ; enough with a loving God in heaven, and compas- 
sionate Redeemer on the throne ; enough with all the sym- 
pathy which springs from a common hope. What would it 
be were this monster of unnamable evil — this fell spirit of 
darkness — this genius of malignity, pollution, and hate — the 
infidelity of the pest-house of free thought, so called, to gain 
prevalence upon earth ? Could men accept it, could it once 
assume the form of a fixed belief, it would quickly convert 
earth into hell, and men would long to die to escape the 
awful horrors of existence. "When man despairs he rushes 
on suicide now, with the bristling fears of eternity to pre- 
vent. Take these away, and let the des]3air of a godless 
universe and a hopeless eternity seize men, what should 
hinder them from the friendly service of mutual murder or 
self -destruction ? and, of those that would be willing to live 
in such a world, what would remain to save them from 
plunging into a hell of lust and crime more frightful even 
than a hell of fire % 

We must use more care in training our members in the 
implications of Church membership. There is a great want 
and a great fault at this point. When a person enters a so- 
ciety of any kind formally, which has duties and obligations, 
he wants to know precisely what will be expected of him as 
a member. He ought to be informed carefully beforehand. 
The Church has adopted a ritual for this purpose, but it is 
too meager to meet the demand. Common Christian in- 



CEXTENARY THOUGHTS. 



121 



struction from the Catechism and the pulpit supplies in part 
the need, but imperfectly. There are duties of a common 
kind, and those which arise out of special relations. A 
Methodist wants to know what Methodism is — what it is to 
be a Methodist. He may, on principle of common pru- 
dence, find this out for himself ; but, in most cases, our peo- 
ple are brought into the Church so carelessly as to gain no 
distinct idea about any of its peculiarities of doctrine or dis- 
cipline. It is a reproach to us how litttle real knowledge of 
Methodism exists among our own people. This is an evil 
which in this generation ought to be permanently cured. 
"We sometimes wonder at the slight attachment of some of 
our people to the Church, and the ease with which they drift 
away from it. The reason, in great part, will be found in 
the fact that they come into the communion without suffi- 
cient knowledge of its character and requirements. Nothing 
is done to develop the church-idea, or to create church love 
and loyalty ; our very children know as much, and in some 
instances more, of other Churches than they do of their 
own, and become ashamed of the Church of their birth 
through their ignorance of what it is. This is a great and 
stinging reproach to us, and it is the growth of the last gen- 
eration. Our fathers did better in this respect than we do. 
The class-meeting was helpful, as it is not now. We must 
give attention to this want, or the Church will degenerate 
into instability and weakness. A Church, like a family, 
when it loses the family bond, becomes a rope of sand. 

An indispensable thing to our success is the revival of 
thorough and radical religious experience. Much will de- 
pend on the pastors at this point. It will be a fatal mistake 
if we form the habit of inducting members into the Church 
without a deep sense of the obligation of a religious life, and 



122 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



a clear and full consciousness of personal salvation. We 
must keep alive the feeling that membership in the Church 
means real godliness, holy living, and daily fellowship with 
God. There is a constant tendency to lapse into worldliness, 
which can only be prevented by constant pastoral vigilance. 
"The form without the power " is our first and greatest 
clanger; the next, reached by easy approach, is " the name 
without the form." The Church must be in the heart and 
the heart in the Church, or it becomes a mere conven- 
tionality. 

To promote and keep alive religious feeling w T e must 
make much of it. This was a great power with our fathers. 
It is the inspiration to zeal. A fervent Christian will be a 
zealous Christian. Keep the holy flame alive. We must 
not forget that the closet of secret prayer is the fueling sta- 
tion for souls. Here we gather fervor and strength. 

We must still be a witnessing Church. This is a great 
power — a power for self-help and a power by which to con- 
vince and win others ; but it must be a real witnessing — the 
irrepressible testimony of our souls, not merely of our lips. 
We want to testify to the love of God because we have an 
experience of the love of God. It is important that we 
maintain the practice as a heart practice. We are witnesses, 
but we are called to testify that which we know and feel. 
A perfunctory testimony is both idle and harmful. Let our 
lips tell what our hearts feel, and nothing else. 

May I suggest to my brother pastors what I think will 
commend itself at once to their good judgment, the wisdom 
of a course something like this : First, on behalf of the 
Church in general, the preparation with care of a half-dozen 
addresses — sermons on Church life — in which to give, (a) an 
account of the Christian Church as such; (h) an account of 



CENTEX A R Y THOUGHTS. 



123 



the origin of our own Church, and what it has come to be ; 
(c) an account of our distinctive doctrines ; (d) an account of 
our peculiar economy — the reasons for our method of pro- 
viding pastoral supply, and the advantages of it ; (V) duty of 
loyalty to the Church, and matters of this kind. The prep- 
aration would lead to profitable study, and it, if done with a 
true and earnest love to the Church, would produce tone and 
strength throughout the body, which would appear in the 
next generation. But if this, for any reason, should be 
deemed impracticable, then adopt this course, which has re- 
cently been adopted by some of our brethren with good 
effect: Have your probationers meet you once a 'month dur- 
ing their probation, and after a personal religious examina- 
tion in the matters of their experience, give them formal 
instruction on the above points, and on the specific duties of 
their Church membership. ~No one can train a young 
Church member as the pastor can, under whom he enters 
the Church. That is the moment when to inspire him with 
ideas of devotion and loyalty. Let us do both, and we will 
be doing these people the best possible service, the fruits of 
which will appear in days to come. And may I add, in this 
connection, let us beware of parading what we may deem 
the weakness and faults of the Church. This habit is one of 
great unwisdom, and fraught w T ith exceeding mischief. If 
our Church has come to set lightly by its institutions, the 
cause will be found here. There has been too much indul- 
gence of criticism. It does not cure, but aggravates, evils. 
If a Church's strength and power is a matter which ought to 
be conserved — and who that wishes well to our common Chris- 
tianity can doubt it or feel otherwise ? — there is nothing so 
fatal to it as carping ; there is nothing so promotive of it as 
measures of Church training, which keeps the mind in- 



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CEXTENA R Y THO UGHTS. 



formed about what the Church is, and the heart interested 
in what the Church is doing. Ignorance is weakness, knowl- 
edge is strength. The work jour Church is doing cannot 
be known without awakening admiration and honor. Other 
people wonder at it. The history of it for a hundred years 
is one of the most marvelous chapters of great achievement. 
Keep it before our people. It will preserve their ancient 
spirit. It is the soldier who is informed of the successes of 
his corps who makes the bravest and most reliable champion 
In the great crisis. The spirit of victory and of loyalty make 
an invincible army. 

There is nothing in Methodism which needs to be concealed. 
Every chapter is one to awaken honest pride. Tell it to 
your children. Keep it alive. Glory in your Methodism. 
This was the strength of our fathers, when to be a Method- 
ist was to be scorned and persecuted. They gloried in the 
reproach. Now that the reproach is taken from us, there is 
danger that we shall become timid. Those who have a weak- 
ness for aristocracy make poor Methodists. We are the 
people's Church. We take stock in humanity. We believe 
in the poor as well as the rich — the unlearned as well as the 
learned. We make the poor rich, and lift the unlearned out 
of their ignorance. We want our doors to be forever open 
to the people. This must be our glory and rejoicing. Those 
who are ashamed of the noble work of helping the needy 
are not the stuff for Methodists. Let us bear our banner 
aloft, with a glow of honest pride that we are the Church of 
the people, having room for all ; and let us be so proudly 
loyal, and victoriously progressive and earnest in our great 
work, that we ourselves and our children shall enjoy it, and 
the world, and our sister Churches shall continue 'to say of us, 
as Chalmers did, " Methodism is Christianity in earnest ;" or, 



CEXTEXARY THOUGHTS. 



125 



as another lias translated it : " Christianity with its sleeves 
rolled up." 

It is important to preserve the closest sympathy between 
the ministry and the people. This was a characteristic of 
the early days of Methodism. It would be impossible to cal- 
culate the good which passed into the life of the nation from 
the contact of our early ministers with the home life of the 
people. This, of course, cannot exist now as it did when our 
ministers lived among the people on the circuit. Many men 
that came to eminence in business and the professions received 
their first impulses and best guidance from the visit of the 
circuit preacher. As far as possible let the close sympathy 
which characterized those early days be preserved. The 
tendency to separation is observable and lamentable. The 
old spirit of hospitality should be maintained. 

Once again, then, let us keep constantly before us the in- 
spiring and ennobling thought that we are called of God to 
be workers together with him to build the divine kingdom 
in beauty and strength in all the world. That in order to 
this, there are mighty foes to be overcome ; the combined 
hosts of error and superstition and sin and spiritual wick- 
edness in high places to be vanquished ; and all the nations- 
and kingdoms of the w^orld to be brought to submit to our 
Emmanuel King. And let us remember that God has called 
us, the ministers of to clay, to this work in the midst of the 
greatest emergencies that have at any time existed. The 
great crisis has come — the Armageddon of prophecy — the 
final great battle of the combined hosts of darkness, of Gog 
and Magog, against the truth, and against the Prince of the 
armies of heaven. We are in the thick and rush of the 
fight, and the standards are mighty. Many hearts are sink- 
ing, and many knees growing weak. The fortunes of the 



126 



CENTENAR Y THO V GHTS. 



day to many seem indecisive. The enemies are neither few 
nor contemptible ; they are sending up shouts of defiance 
and triumph from many parts of the field ; they are bent on 
victory. The whole world is standing in almost breathless 
suspense over the great struggle ; the peoples of all lands are 
watching and waiting ; the telegraph blazes with intelli- 
gence, and the press is burdened with news of the situation ; 
princes and kings are plotting and counter plotting ; univer- 
sities and senates are among the combatants; heaven waits 
the issue. The future depends on the mighty catastrophe. 
Men of God ! to you is given the key of the tremendous 
crisis. Be true to your King ; " put on the whole armor of 
God." u Quit you like men." Make your studies and 
closets burn and blaze. Stand on the watch-towers of Zion. 
" Cry aloud and spare not." As God is God, he will lead 
you to victory. A little on the battle will clear away, and 
the ensign of the Prince will peacefully wave over a con- 
quered and redeemed world; and the inhabitants of the 
mount Zion which shall then fill the whole earth, shall cry 
out and shout for the King that is in the midst thereof. Let 
the old men bring their wisdom and experience, and the 
young men their fresh learning and manly strength, and vie 
with each other in earnestness and devotion ; let all creeds 
and sects emulate each other, and the pulpit and the pew 
conspire together ; let charity move hand in hand with zeal, 
and the hand of labor keep pace with the heart of prayer ; let 
culture bring its eloquence and crudeness its homely sincerity ; 
let all come " to the help of the Lord against the mighty," 
and the night of the world's sorrow and ignorance and sin 
will soon merge, and melt into the dawn of millennial bright- 
ness and peace ! Ultimately truth must win — " the eternal 
years of God are hers." The one thing wanted is, that we be 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



127 



manly men ; that we be worthy of our vocation ; that we 
be thoroughly harnessed for our great work ; that we stand 
in the van of the age ; that we keep the confidence of the 
wise and virtuous in our sincerity and ability, and show 
ourselves competent to lead our generation. Failing in 
these things, we neither deserve nor can win success. The 
Master calls, Onward ! onward ! the perishing world cries 
out in all its waste and desolate places, Onward ! onward ! the 
voice comes from the four quarters of the globe, and the 
mountains echo it to the seas, Onward ! onward ! The heav- 
ens are watching and the earth is waiting. Dare we, so 
surrounded, so encompassed, with such motives to heroism, 
with such issues to strive for, with such guarantees of 
success — dare we be less than sublime ? If none of these con- 
siderations move us, let us, for shame' sake, take off our cler- 
ical robes, and go among the swine-herds to which we belong. 
Let us no longer dishonor God and insult men by braying 
our weakness and folly within the sacred precincts of the 
altars of God and the Christian pulpit ! Either let us be 
men, or strip off the priestly vestment ! rise to the sub- 
limity of the holy calling, or make way for others who shall 

be worthy of our sublime vocation ! 
9 



Thoughts for the Pew. 



Son of man, I have made thee a watchman unto the house af Israel: therefore 
hear the word at my mouth, and give them warning from me. When I say tmto 
the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest 
to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life ; the same wicked man 
shall die in his iniquity ; but his blood will I require at thine hand. Yet if thou 
warn the wicked, and he turn not from his wickedness, nor from his wicked way, 
Jie shall die in his iniquity; but tlwu hast delivered thy soul. Again, When a 
righteous man doth turn from his righteousness, and commit iniquity, and Hay a 
stumbling-block before Mm, he shall die: because thou hast not given him warning, 
he shall die in his sin, and his righteousness which he hath done shall not be re- 
membered; but his blood will I require at thine hand. Nevertheless, if thou warn 
the righteous man, that the righteous sin not, and he doth not sin, he shall surely 
live, because he is warned; also thou hast delivered thy soul. — Ezek. iii. 17-21. 

Then the twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them, and said, It is 
not reason that we should leave the vjord of God, and serve tables. Wherefore, 
brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, fxdl of the Holy Ghost 
and ivisdom, whom we may appoint over this business. But we will give ourselves 
continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word. — Acts vi, 2-4. 



CENTENA R Y TIIO UGIITS. 



131 



' THOUGHTS FOR THE PEW. 

BRETHREN of the Lay Electoral Conference, I have been 
desired by your brethren of the ministerial conference 
to speak some words of greeting and welcome for them. It 
gives me great pleasure to comply with their request, as well 
on my own behalf as theirs. I am certain you will not be 
displeased if my address should pass beyond words of mere 
greeting and welcome to some practical counsels and advices 
touching matters of common interest to yourselves and your 
ministerial brethren ; rather, you expect and desire it. Many 
of you were present to hear my address to the ministers 
with respect to their peculiar work, and you were pleased to 
give signs of approval. You will not be displeased, I am 
sure, if I use the same liberty with you with respect to your 
duty. As my office relates me to you in much the same 
way that it relates me to them, it would be an injustice to 
you if I should be less faithful — I dare not. In any compact 
involving important reciprocal duties and responsibilities, it 
is very necessary that neither party should be permitted to 
forget or become negligent, lest the yoke of the compact be- 
come grievous, and lest the ends aimed at fail. 

When, a few years ago, a time so recent that it is yet fresh 
in your memories, you were raised to the position of co- 
legislators of the Church, many questioned the wisdom of 
the measure, and not a few entertained grave fears, and even 
prophesied evil results. Peculiar contingencies served, in a 
very brief period, to demonstrate that it was both wise and 
timely. No one now either doubts its wisdom or fears its 
influence. 



132 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



Up to that time the power had all vested in the hands of 
the ministers. True, they had been careful to guard the 
rights of the laity by provisions of organic law which could 
not be altered without their consent ; true, the power was 
carefully exercised ; but the surrender of power is not always 
easy or graceful, and when wrenched by violence imperils 
the stability of institutions. In this case the change was 
wrought without disturbing agitation, or even solicitation, 
and was as creditable to the parties surrendering as it was 
grateful to the party accepting it. We all rejoice over it 
as an accomplished fact. Not a little advantage of the 
change is, that it brings us into harmony with the spirit of 
the age, and silences the reproaches of our enemies and the 
questionings of our friends : but a much more important ad- 
vantage is, that it brings us into closer and more intimate rela- 
tions among ourselves ; and a still greater advantage is, that 
it clothes you with rights and responsibilities which it is 
wholesome for you to exercise, and which it is good for the 
body to be exercised by you. So, on behalf of your brethren, 
I extend hearty greetings to you to-day. We are glad to see 
you here, and will be glad to see your delegates elect in the 
great Church council in May next. We rejoice to hear of 
the harmony which pervaded your deliberations, and to note 
the evidences of your continued deep interest in and loyalty 
to our common Church, the echoes of which reached us even 
before you came in person to report them. 

And now, dear brethren, will you permit me to turn from 
these pleasing topics to some of a more practical, but, I trust, 
not less pleasing, kind. In Christ Jesus we are one — mem- 
bers of one body, of which he is the head — but we are called 
to different functions in the body. It is of this I wish more 
particularly to speak, that I may especially direct your atten- 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



133 



tion to matters of interest to you, and through you to the 
laity throughout the Church. 

In the order of the Church, and, as we all believe, in the 
order of God, we, your ministers, are called to be ministers — 
to the duties of instruction and administration in the house 
of God. The covenants we enter into in accepting this holy 
trust are such as to separate us from all secularities. We 
are set apart exclusively to this one work, and are required 
to give to it our exclusive time and undivided powers. We 
may not turn aside, without treason to our vows, to attend to 
any other pursuit. What our vows require you also demand. 
The nature of our work and the covenants we have made 
forbid that we give thought or effort to provide for our tem- 
poral wants even, or those of our families. This withdraw- 
ment from secularities and sacrifice of remunerative pursuits 
is, that we may be your servants — that we may, by diligent 
study and prayerfulness, minister to you in spiritual things. 
We freely relinquish the pursuits in which men generally 
and naturally delight, and renounce the hopes of fortune for 
ourselves and our children, and accept the life of homeless 
itinerants, going where we may be sent, surrendering the 
social and friendly ties which are prized by others, calling no 
place our home, and giving ourselves to anxious cares and 
many self-denials, that we may build your homes in beauty 
and add comfort and dignity to you. We consent to poverty 
without complaining, and renounce all idea of making any 
provision for a rainy day, or for sickness, or for old age, and 
all idea of helping our children to start the world in compe- 
tence, and every thing else looking to the accumulation of 
property or gain, that we may serve you. We do not even 
now speak of these things as a hardship, but simply call 
you to the recognition of the fact. Nor are we unmindful 



131 



CEXTEXARY THOUGHTS. 



of the compensations. It is not a joyless task. The Master, 
who has called us to the work, has not had the cruelty to 
impose on us unrequited burdens. It is a sweet and blessed 
service. While we give ourselves to you, out of secret gar- 
ners in many ways he abundantly enriches us. He makes 
your fatness to be ours. 

But while he has called us away from secularities, he has 
called you to them, that we, in our non-secular life, and you, 
in your secular life, may equally serve him ; for we are all 
servants under one Master. The vocations are different, but 
they are for the same end. Neither can do without the 
other. In different ways we work to the same result. You 
are not called to teach, but we cannot teach without you. 
The two are one agent, each supplying a necessary factor, 
and so each alike sharing in the great common honor of 
being workers together with God. Your secularity and our 
non-secularity are thus alike sacred, if we will have it so. I 
desire to point out how this is. 

By not placing yon in the sanctuary God has not released 
you from service. On the contrary, he has, in that, ap- 
pointed you to a special service, to be reached in some one 
of many ways which he opens to you, leaving the responsi- 
bility of selection with you. The special call is, that you 
should engage in some branch of useful industry, by which, 
to help the general welfare, procure things necessary and con- 
venient to your own development and the proper care of 
your families. ~No truth is plainer in his word than this. 
It is a greatly neglected and a greatly misunderstood truth, 
and I want, if possible, to lift it into clearness and enforce the 
true grounds of it. It is no more optional with you whether 
you will be secular or not, than it is with us whether we will 
be sacred or not. Uncalled to the latter, you are called to 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS 



135 



the former. The particular kind of secularity only is left 
optional. 

God has no sinecures, no idlers, no spongers. He imposes 
labor as a duty on all men, not for labor's sake, but for the 
results of labor. It was the law of paradise, and has never 
been repealed. Jesus teaches it in the parable of the talents, 
and it is re-enforced in the epistles. There is a reason for 
this : labor is a talent — that is, it is a power for good. The 
law demands the use of the power for the sake of what it 
can do for human welfare. All laws are for welfare, and 
whatever will produce it is enjoined in all worlds and to 
all eternity. 

Under this law we exist. When the young man arrives 
at a responsible age it requires him to select what secularity 
he will pursue. Since he must work, it is his duty to con- 
sider to what end he should work, and what kind of work 
he should do. As a rational and accountable being he must 
give heed to these questions. That God wants him to make 
the best use of his powers — that is, that use of them that 
will secure the largest contribution to welfare — his own 
and others that may be influenced by him — there can be 
no doubt- 
It is his duty, therefore, to look around him and determine, 
to the best of his ability, what particular calling he will select 
— whether he will be a farmer, or mechanic, or merchant, or 
student, or professional man in some one of the learned vo- 
cations, or only a day-laborer. Of course circumstances will 
do much to determine his choice ; but this does not free him 
from the duty of carefully considering the question in the 
light of circumstances. Both on moral and rational grounds 
he should choose that which promises to make his life most 
useful and happy. The interests to be affected are his own 



136 



CENTENAR Y TH 0 UGHTS. 



and others — if he shall determine on marriage, his own and 
those of his family, and those of the other portion of man- 
kind. He cannot innocently be oblivions to the question of 
remunerativeness. It is his moral duty, as well as an obliga- 
tion of reason, that he should consider this. He may set one 
remunerativeness over against another ; may weigh social or 
political influence against money compensations, or literary 
or professional usefulness against either of these; but he 
must choose that which, on rational and moral grounds, 
seems to promise the best returns of helpfulness to welfare, 
that which will put the largest value in his life. This, 
under an ideal economy such as the divine economy is, 
must be the determinative factor in the law of duty. God 
requires nothing of any of his creatures that is not for 
their greatest good. 

Having selected his calling — or if, as in most cases, he has 
drifted into it — it becomes his duty to prosecute it faithfully ; 
he is bound to make the most of it. Is it a money pur- 
suit? he should make the most money possible according to 
right principles ; for the gain is the power which comes to 
him, and becomes his means and measure of usefulness. Is 
he a farmer ? he should aim to be the best farmer possible. 
Is he a mechanic, a merchant, a banker ? whatever he is, he 
is bound to pursue his business in the most skillful manner 
with reference to recompense, if so be he observe the laws 
of righteousness and mercy. If his choice be a profession, 
he should make the best success possible in his profession — 
the best lawyer, the best doctor, the best legislator — always 
limiting all that he does by the obligations of morality. It 
is all expressed in a sentence : he must make the most pro- 
ductive value of himself and his opportunities. This is the 
divine law of duty. It requires that he should be on the 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



137 



alert ; that he should make use of brain and hand ; that he 
should do his utmost to convert every thing within his reach 
to a power which he can use. He must let nothing divert 
him or escape him which can be utilized, keeping strictly 
within the requirements of justice and mercy. If he can, he 
must be the best man there is in his line. 

Demands of ideal law never conflict. Temporal duties- — or 
duties pertaining to this life — can never interfere with spirit- 
ual duties — or duties pertaining to the life to come — but are 
always subservient to them. When a man properly attends 
to his temporal duties he is so far in the line of his spirit- 
ual duties ; and he cannot attend to his spiritual duties and 
omit or neglect these. Following the obligation to the wise 
selection of our business and its diligent and industrious 
prosecution, comes the duty of taking care of its results. 
We are held under the strictest obligation to the law of 
thrift. It is not left optional with us whether we will or 
not husband the fruits of our toil ; we must do it. They 
are a sacred trust for the care and use of which we are as 
much responsible as we are for the right use of our facul- 
ties or powers in acquiring them. What of power we ac- 
quire is no more our own, to be disposed of ad libitum, than 
we are our own. We have no more right to misuse it than 
we have to omit to produce it. We may not burn it up or 
squander it. Whether it be property power, or power of 
personal or professional influence, or any other power thrust 
upon us or acquired, we are held responsible not to waste it 
or abuse it. It is a lent talent, and the Lender will require 
an account. I am addressing myself to Christians who rec- 
ognize the obligation of this law. I am anxious that you 
should take the full measure of it into your minds. Have I 
correctly represented it? Is it true that God permits no 



138 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



idler? that he forbids the retirement, or non-use or misuse, 
of a talent — the putting it in a napkin and burying it ? that 
he demands use and increase? that he has incorporated this 
law in the on-going of things ? that he has proclaimed it in 
his revealed law ? Recognizing it, can you be indifferent to 
it ? No, brethren, it is not optional whether you obey these 
divine laws or not. They are eternal statutes. They are 
binding. We can disobey them, but in doing so we must 
incur guilt, and guilt is no trifle. Let us put from us the 
thought or practice of supposing that what we have is our 
own, and that because we can use it as we please, therefore, 
we have the right to use it as we please. He that sent us 
into the world, and gave us the world, and made its possible 
good to ourselves and others conditional on our right use of 
our powers and the right use of its productions, has shown 
us plainly before our eyes in experience and observation, and 
in his moral law, that he will not be indifferent to omission 
or transgression, however we may be. 

The duty of labor is not because of any good in labor 
itself, as such, nor is it simply an arbitrary arrangement im- 
posed by a superior on an inferior ; it is a provision to meet a 
want, and that is the ground of the law and obligation. Every 
duty is in the interest of welfare, and is hence a duty. The 
good and necessities of human life require labor, the merest 
existence or continuance demands it, much more all the 
high and properly human necessities. The earth and 
heaven are stored with riches, but they must be sought 
diligently by both brain and hand. Possibly it might have 
been otherwise, but it is not. The law of labor is organic — 
grounded in the very structure of the universe. Non-labor 
and especially non-intelligent labor are the death of the sys- 
tem. The absolute necessity of it, to realize the purpose of 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



139 



the system, is the ground of the moral law over free 
and intelligent beings ; so that duty rises not simply as a 
necessity out of natural wants, but as an obligation on eth- 
ical grounds. The neglect is not simply death, but it is sin, 
which is manifold worse than death. It is a necessity which 
underlies all human growth and development, and therefore 
is an organic law. To neglect it, is necessarily to lapse 
into or never to rise above barbarism. The obligation is 
universal on ethical grounds. Circumstances may raise some 
individuals above the natural need. Inherited fortune or 
sudden accumulation may put one in possession of means to 
obtain many of the goods for which industry is usually a need, 
and might seem, therefore, to dispense with the duty ; on the 
contrary, it can only change the direction and complexion of 
it. As there are varieties of industries, all of which are use- 
ful, and as the individual has a right to select that which 
commends itself to his moral sense and rational intelligence, 
so circumstances modify the quality and mode of his work, 
but the law does not, therefore, let go its hold. " He is still 
bound, as a steward, to use his entire power according to the 
will of the great Master, who must forever be supreme." 

We turn now to consider the uses that are to be served 
by work. There are two conceivable reasons for incorporat- 
ing the act and the need of labor in the natural and moral 
systems. One is, that the act of labor should itself be useful ; 
the other is, that the products should be useful. There are 
also two conceivable degrees in which labor should be useful : 
one, which would limit its possible usefulness to the laborer 
himself, which might be modified by serving simply as to 
his animal wants, or by serving him in his higher human 
wants ; the other, that which would extend its possible use- 
fulness to others ; and this, again, might be limited or modi- 



140 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



fied, by its serving to the animal wants of others, or made to 
meet their higher human wants ; and the natural and moral 
law which imposes it might conceivably be controlled by the 
first, or might be as broad as the second. What do we find to 
be the fact ? 

If the first law obtained — limiting the end of labor to the 
welfare of the worker himself — it would enshrine selfishness 
and make it the determinative factor of duty. The divine 
idea is the very reverse of that. It is, " No man liveth unto 
himself." The interests of the whole are indissolubly bound 
up with the interests of the individual. 

But the law undoubtedly respects the individual good; 
that is, it is appointed for his good ; and for his good in two 
respects. First, the need to work is itself beneficial. It de- 
velops faculty ; it makes fiber. Driven by it, the man be- 
comes a man. It especially brings forth the distinctly manly 
qualities. It quickens the mind, and promotes the moral 
and humane sympathies. It is a beneficent arrangement. 
It creates happiness. Employment is sanitary to mind and 
body. He who thinks that idleness or ease is bliss, knows 
nothing of the philosophy of perfect human enjoyment. 
Action, action, intense earnest action, is the elixir of life — 
is the joy of heaven. Holy endeavor is bliss. 

But that which gives dignity to work, and raises it into 
the category of noblest duties, is the good which its products 
enables us to do, and which the moral law of labor requires 
us to do. 

What, then, is the right use of the property of any kind 
we create by labor ? There is scarcely a more important 
question than this. The common and thoughtless answer is : 
To use it for our personal gratification ; to buy what we 
choose with it, or hoard it up, or give it away as we like ; it 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



141 



is ours, we made it honestly, no one else has any right to it ; 
we can employ it to make more, or we can use it for self- 
indulgence, or we can take care of it for our children ; we 
can use it to procure for ourselves costly splendor or we can 
waste it in meaningless pleasures ; and, so long as we do not 
employ it for the oppression of the poor, or as a means of 
evil, neither God nor man has a right to complain. This is 
the practical answer in most cases, and even by many, if not 
most, Christian people. 

Suppose we should raise the question, " What is the divine 
idea in the case % " what do you suppose would be the an- 
swer? Is there one of you who imagines it would be any 
thing resembling that we have described ? Suppose we 
could get away from our little selves and petty surround- 
ings, and gain a grand view of human life and its possibili- 
ties, could we ourselves take such a view ? 

Perhaps the divine answer would be something like this : 
These things which you have produced are valuable. I have 
intrusted you with them as my steward ; employ them as a 
means of good to yourselves and others. 

First of all, provide for your own needs out of them. I 
say first of all, because it is a divine law that a man shall 
first care for himself. No claims can ever take precedence 
of the real claims of self. A man's first duty is to himself, 
and no other duty can ever require the real interests of self 
to be sacrificed — they must forever be first. But what are 
these interests of self that must take precedence % Personal 
interests are of two kinds. They are both real and absolute, 
and cannot be postponed without violation of the most sacred 
law ; and no other duty can separate them or set them aside. 
They are provisions for the wants of the body, and provisions 
for personal wants : for the first, necessary food and raiment, 



142 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



a shelter, and home ; for the second, culture and training. 
How much he may expend on these must depend on circum- 
stances, on other demands, and on his ability. Until they are 
fairly provided for, other claims must stand in abeyance ; 
but, any thing beyond these necessities must wait on other 
claims. To the utmost need and possibility of self -care and 
development we may enjoy and employ the fruits of our 
toil, but nothing for mere gratification or waste.* 

Next to provision for our own wants is provision for those 
who are dependent on us — our families. In a certain sense 
this is but an extension of the claims of self. No other claim 
can come in which would substantially affect or impair this, 
until it is fully met. We are bound to take full and adequate 
care of our homes. Now, what are these legitimate wants ? 
It is doubtful if there is any practical question of so much 
importance so imperfectly understood. Our families, like 
ourselves, have two classes of urgent wants, for which they 
are dependent on us, and it is not optional whether we will 
attend to them or not. The highest law requires them of us. 
We must provide for their temporal wants food, clothing, 
and shelter. What kind of food, what kind of clothing, 
what kind of shelter, will depend on circumstances and our 
ability. To meet this demand we are under the necessity 
to call in the help of others. We must supplement our pro- 
ducing power by that of the farmer, the weaver, the merchant, 
the grocer, the mechanic, the manufacturer, the public car- 
rier. No one of us could possibly ourselves provide what 
may be considered the merest necessities of life. In some 
way we must contrive to build all the industries into our in- 
dividual homes — all skills, all arts, all products, from all 
quarters of the globe. Left alone, we could scarcely rise 

* Note D. 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



143 



above barbarism, indeed we could not. So we must take tlie 
product of our own genius or labor, and convert it by some 
medium of exchange into the products of all other workers. 
Thus, -by exchange of labor, or by purchase out of the pay 
for our labor, we can build our homes in comfort, and what 
we can do becomes not merely an option with us, but a duty. 
These things that pertain to bodily welfare are important. 
The merest physical condition of a human home demands 
much care and forethought. For the want of it many a life 
is worn out in absolute discomfort, amounting sometimes to 
martyrdom ; many a wife and mother is tortured through 
the years with a living agony, to which death would be pref- 
erable ; and children are reared in conditions to brutalize 
them ; and this not for the want of means to make it other- 
wise, but from indifference, or want of thought and proper 
feeling. Years drag on without comforts or conveniences, 
and the home becomes cheerless and loveless as a tomb. * 

But this is but one side of the wants to be provided for, 
and by far the inferior side ; though I think in a majority of 
cases it is safe to say that it is about all that is thought of — 
the toiler proposes nothing more. Food, raiment, a home, 
are the things about which he thinks, the things he works 
for ; but which, after all, often, for the simple want of proper 
thought and feeling, he poorly provides. That there are other 
and deeper wants which must, by a much higher imperative, 
be provided for, he forgets entirely, or for the want of re- 
flection hardly knows of — soul wants — wants of the im- 
mortal. It is one of the saddest facts I know, that even in 
many Christian homes the children are regarded as if they 
were but animals, if we may judge by the manner in which 
they are treated. I do not mean that they are ajbused or 

* Note D. 

10 



CENTENAR Y THO UGHTS. 



maltreated ; but that their greatest wants are simply misun- 
derstood, and adequate care not bestowed on them because of 
the misconception. It is assumed that if proper food is sup- 
plied, and proper raiment provided, and a comfortable home 
secured, that nothing more is necessary, or at most, that a small 
amount of education will supply whatever more is needed or 
desirable. They will grow up to manhood and womanhood 
in course of time, and the years will bring the knowledge 
and accomplishments proper to maturity. Thus Christian 
families are growing up all over the land, and there is not 
even a sense of the sad mistake ; and the parents comfort 
themselves that their children are not being sj)oiled by 
education ; when in fact, as to their true life, they are being 
starved by slow process, and sent into the world the merest 
excuses for men and women, with no suitable preparation 
for such lives as are possible to them, and such lives as they 
ought to live. The school and the church are looked upon 
as luxuries, or, worse still, as surplusage. They are, in fact, 
as much an essential part of the apparatus of human life as are 
the farm and the workshop. They can be dispensed with, 
and the family survive, but not with completeness ; the ani- 
mal only will live, the proper human element will perish. 
There are multitudes of families all about us in which the 
humanity is at zero. The produce of our labor is not simply 
for the kitchen or wardrobe ; it must be built into the 
souls of our children. It is a vast, as well as most glorious, 
work to build a noble man or a worthy woman. To simply 
breed them and grow them, requires the same kind of care 
that it does to raise fine cattle; many a child receives less 
attention even than that : but to train and develop them into 
human beauty and worthiness is quite another thing, and 
puts into requisition another class of agencies. We must call 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



145 



in other helps than the farmer and merchant and house- 
builder and clothes-makers. We must employ the best 
agencies to teach and train ; we must have as an annex to 
every home, the school and the church. The professors of 
many learnings, and the priest of one faith but many-sided 
power to teach and persuade and admonish and guide, 
must come to the help of a father's anxiety and a mother's 
love. Again, we say this is not optional. It stands among 
the prime duties we owe to our children, which is obscure 
only to the ignorant and uninstructed ; and that often by the 
guilty neglect of the ministers of God, who are called to in- 
struct the people in the matters of duty. 

But, not to dwell in further detail, I want to leave with 
you the thought of your great responsibility in this matter. 
Yon are fathers, and represent the fathers of the Church ; as 
such I speak to yon, and through you to all Christian fathers. 
God devolves upon you the duty of looking after your 
homes. Your brain and muscle are for this, as one of the 
very chief of your sacred duties. No man can be a worthy 
Christian who neglects at this point, any more than he can 
if he neglect prayer or the holy sacraments. You are ap- 
pointed to bring up a holy generation. Yon must give- 
thought to it as well as prayer; and must build the products 
of your industry and thrift into it, as well as your prayers 
and thought. Your money must be spent for it, with 
prudence and wisdom, even as your prayers are offered for 
it. This is what all that we earn is for. It is its supremest 
use. You have nothing on hand, and never can have any 
thing on hand, of any comparable importance to the proper 
training and development of your children. God not only 
demands it, bnt he needs it. He wants your sons and daugh- 
ters to be polished after the similitude of a palace, for their 



146 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



sakes, and for his sake, and for your sake ; but not for that 
alone; he wants it for the sake of the world, and for the 
sake of all the ages of men and women. He wants them to 
be trained that they may train others ; wants them to be 
lights and powers. In yonr homes may be spirits who, under 
proper training, would move this whole world upward. He 
demands that you create, as far as you can, the favorable con- 
ditions. He demands that your homes shall be ideal homes 
— -as nearly perfect as you, with all possible helps at your com- 
mand, can make them : homes well appointed, well supplied ; 
homes enriched with books, and the culture and the ameni- 
ties which come from education and mental and spiritual 
training ; homes of delicate refinement, and with robust com- 
mon sense and high moral principles ; homes where love sits 
enthroned like a queen ; homes where the parents work to 
the one supreme end of sending forth a royal generation of 
sons and daughters equipped with knowledge, and inspired 
with high and honorable aims ; homes that shine with the 
divine light of intelligence and virtue. This is what God 
wants and what he demands ; and it is your duty to create 
such homes. Have I exaggerated or in any way misstated the 
truth ? If not, then your duty is plain. What a magnifi- 
cent work it is ! God has given you being. He has en- 
riched you with power. He has laid the world at your feet. 
He has said, Go and possess it. Use brain and hand to sub- 
jugate it. Do not abuse it ; do not waste it. Euild your- 
selves by it into noble men. Build beautiful homes. Raise 
up royal children. Make heaven and eternity rich. This is 
your work. 

Yet once more, before leaving this branch of thought with 
respect to your duty, I desire to bring your minds again face 
to face with the relations of the Church to your life, and 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



147 



your relations to the Church in the matter of your labor. 
This, in fact, is the special subject I had in my mind when I 
commenced speaking. 

If I am right in the theory I have set forth as to your 
duty, both to yourselves and to your families, and if I am right 
in the assumption that the Church is an indispensable help to 
the adequate discharge of your duty, as much so as the farm, 
the home, the manufactory ; that in fact the one can no more 
be dispensed with than the other, then what follows ? 

Then this follows : you must have the Church. Then this 
follows : you must, out of your means, provide the Church. 
Then this follows : you ought to make it as much a part of 
your calculation in the matter of necessary expenses as the 
items of bread and clothing. Then this follows : you ought 
to arrange to meet the expense with the same liberality and 
cheerfulness with which you meet all other items of neces- 
sary expense : am I not justified in saying, with more cheer- 
fulness and gladness, and more abundant liberality ? 

I speak to you now as representative men, and through you 
to the Church, and ask, Do we so treat the subject ? Do we 
put the Church in among our necessary expenses, as we do 
other things ? Do we make our portion of its proper ex- 
pense a matter of calculation and thought, as we do our 
family expenses ? Do we insist on paying our debt in this 
case as we do when we buy a piece of land, or some article 
of provision or clothing for ourselves or our children ? Do 
we do it ? If not, why not ? In the light of facts, is it not 
lamentably apparent that we are peculiarly slow and reluc- 
tant in this matter ? Is it right, is it worthy of us, that this 
is so ? Must the Church forever be a pensioner on our bounty 
instead of a claimant on our honor and justice ? Can we do 
without it ? Do we, as Christians or men, even, entertain the 



148 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



thought ? If not, shall we forever treat it as if it were a mendi- 
cant begging for the crumbs from our table, whom we may 
dismiss if we choose, or may screw down to the least possible 
contribution as an object of charity ? Is it not time that we 
correct both our feelings and practice on this subject 1 

The next matter in this connection I want to call your at- 
tention to is this : If the Church is an important integer in 
our life, is it not also important that it be as perfect in all 
of its appointments as possible, so as to bring the full force 
of all possible value to us ? And what is your relation as 
laymen to its efficiency in respect of these ? 

Of course the Church, like every thing effected and af- 
fected by human agency and infirmity, may be more or less 
slovenly. If slovenly in its pulpit, and slovenly in its disci- 
pline, and slovenly in its appointments, and slovenly in the 
character of its members, it will be a poor thing, and have in 
it but little worth saving. But whose fault will it be ? It 
can be a power for good ; if it is not, who is to blame ? The 
minister, if the fault be with him, certainly will not escape. 
If he betray his trust, if he prove to be unworthy in example, 
if he fail to qualify himself for his work, if he neglect his 
duties as teacher and pastor, if he lack in earnestness and 
devotion, if he be not a man of God, " thoroughly furnished 
to every good word and work," " instant in season and out of 
season," if he lack in fidelity, and zeal, and love of souls, if 
his services are tame and spiritless, then fearful will be his 
responsibility. But even if all this be so, you will still be 
without excuse if any part of the sad condition be attributable 
to you ; much more, if he be a faithful minister, and the 
Church then go halting, you need to be concerned about 
your responsibility. There is a wide and damaging tendency 
to throw all the responsibility of failure or success upon the 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



119 



pulpit. The pulpit lias, indeed, a great and solemn respon- 
sibility ; nor would I in the least abate the sense of it. God 
will hold the watchmen to strict account. But I wish to lay 
upon your minds your relations to the question of the Church's 
efficiency. All through this land there are half -dead Churches, 
and the cry of lamentation comes up for the want of efficiency 
in the ministry ; and we do not deny that there is reason ; 
but what we want you to consider is, whether this is the sole 
or even chief cause. 

Consider, are not you the Church ? Is it not, after all, 
largely what you make it % How, then, can you help cure 
the evil? What are your duties as laymen in the premises 1 
Of course it would be the merest platitude to say that you 
need yourselves to be thorough Christians ; yet I must per- 
petrate that platitude, and linger over it for a few mo- 
ments. The Church is what its members are. If they are 
not thorough Christians, how can the Church be any thing 
but dead ? You are the Church, and you are dead. What 
can any preacher do with a dead Church on his hands ? 
Are you not as much responsible for your deadness as any 
other person can be ? Can you justly lay it to the account 
of the minister that you are dead ? Has he not enough 
to bear without your loading him with your sin and the con- 
sequences of your neglect ? Is it right for you to expect 
the minister to carry you — to do your work as well as his 
own ? Are you babes and children, that you should still be 
carried or nursed at the breast ? You need to have the 
Church a power. Make it a power. But you say, " If only 
the preacher were alive — if he would rouse me up." Sup- 
pose you take another view. You have been looking to the 
preacher and complaining of him ; may it not be that you 
are the cause of all the trouble yourself ; may it not be that 



150 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



it is jour indifference, jour deadness, that kills him, or neu- 
tralizes his words ? Are there no duties that jou are neglect- 
ing ? No coldness and apathj that make jou a hinderance ? 
These are questions which everj lajman needs to answer. 
If the preacher is a factor, so are jou. The fault maj be his, 
or it ma j be jours, or it may be common to both. 

What, then, is your duty with regard to the Church ? I 
return to the answer already made, which we agreed was a 
merest platitude : it is your first duty to be thoroughly, pro- 
foundly, through and through, a Christian — a Christian con- 
tinually — a man of God at home, every day, in the town, in 
business, so that men will know you as such, not by jour Sun- 
daj clothes and meeting-daj face and professions, but bj jour 
spirit and life. That is jour privilege, that is jour dutj. 
The Church will not be a dead Church when jou are alive. 
That is what God wants of jou. Will jou dare to be that ? 
Never mind telling about it or complaining about others — be 
it ; the world will find it out and feel its power. 

But jou have churchlj duties, as well as the personal dutj 
of being thoroughlj a Christian, and jou cannot maintain 
the character of the latter without discharging the former. 
Let me specialize several things with respect to these church- 
lj duties : 

You want to keep jour spirit sweet toward the Church. 
It is easj to get out of joint ; then every thing goes wrong. 
Nothing can be done right when the soul is soured. Sour 
godliness is an uncomfortable thing. The spirit of censorious- 
ness and fault-finding, especially when it is the most promi- 
nent element in one's religion — which is sure to see wrong in 
every body but itself — is a cuckoo's egg in the dove's nest, 
which ultimately feeds upon the nest itself. Keep sweet 
toward the Church. Cultivate a gentle and loving spirit. 



CENTJEyARY THOUGHTS. 



151 



Especially keep in loving relations with your pastor. Yon 
will get little good out of him if you permit estrangement 
to come into your heart or home toward him. Some good 
people seem to think that a habit of censoriousness toward 
others proves that they are immaculate, and takes all the 
blame of whatever evils there is away from them, and 
posits them at somebody else's door. Keep sweet yourself, 
and strive to keep the body sweet. A fomenter of evil is 
like a pestilence. Watch the door of your lips, and utter no 
words of resentment or censoriousness that will propagate 
coldness and alienation among friends. Let the blessing of 
the peace-maker be yours. Be interested in the Church. 
Carry it about with you in your heart as you do your home. 
Remember it is your Church, and its welfare is your welfare. 
If it suffers you suffer. Whatever militates against it mili- 
tates against you. If you, by neglect or willfulness, or by 
word or act, hurt it, it is your own soul that will receive the 
wound. The blow you give it will rebound, on your own 
head, and your wife and your children will receive the stab. 
Cherish the Church, and it will cherish you ; starve it, and it 
will bring famine and leanness into your own soul, and into 
your own home. Pray for your Church daily in all your 
praying. Let your language, the language of your deepest 
and sincerest soul, be, " If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let 
my right hand forget her cunning. . . . Let my tongue cleave to 
the roof of my mouth, if I prefer not Jerusalem above my 
chief joy." Love the gates and the ways of Zion, and teach it 
to your children. Love to dwell in the house of God, to be 
present at all its solemn feasts. Be not simply a spectator in 
the assemblies, interested in what others do and say, but let 
your soul and your voice be in the worship. Be not critical 
or severe, but simple, earnest, and loving toward all. Ob- 



152 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



serve these things and do them, and your soul will feast on 
the marrow and fatness of the house of God. 

Care begets love, and love begets happiness. Take care of 
the sanctuary. Do not let it fall into decay or neglect. It is 
your soul's sabbath home — your children's home. At its 
altar-rail you receive the holy sacraments. From its portals 
you will be carried to your last resting-place. Keep it clean 
and in order, and have this on your heart. Do not wait for 
others, or account it less your business than that of your 
ministers. Your God's house should be the sweetest and 
most carefully kept part of your own house. Do not think 
it a burden or a tax to train vines and lay paint on the place 
where you are to spend your best and happiest hours. Let 
it be a picture of beauty, and let your pew be kept full and 
warm with the cheerful presence of your household at all 
the gatherings and holy feasts of the sanctuary. These may 
seem like little things, but they will make the house of God 
dear to you, and it will spring among you fountains of sweet 
waters and fertilizing streams in the desert of life. Make 
the house of the Lord a joy to you, and it will make you a 
joy ; build it strong, and it will build you strong ; lay its 
stones in beauty, and it will garnish and beautify your souls, 
and the souls of your seed after you. Make the habit of 
remembering that most of all that you carry with you over 
the river will be what has gone into your life from the sanct- 
uary. The rest you will leave behind with the cerements 
of the grave. 

Cherish loving relations with your pastor. You are to 
take the bread of life from his lips. Pray much for him, 
that he may be able to instruct you, and feed your soul and 
the souls of your family. This will prepare you to get good 
from him. He may not be your choice ; he does not exactly 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



153 



suit your taste ; Lis voice and manner are not agreeable ; lie 
lias little ways that are unpleasant to you; nevertheless, he 
is your pastor. The habit of real praying for him will cure 
all these petty annoyances. Especially when you come to 
hear the word of God from his mouth, pray for him, that he 
may have good success in preaching. The crumbs will turn 
to loaves, and the wee drops into rivers, while you open your 
heart in prayer for him. As far as possible let him feel that 
you have him in loving thought, and he will repay it ail in 
richness to you. 

Look after the minister's wants. Provide generously for 
him. Don't let him feel too much the pinch of poverty. 
Remember that, as a rule, all that he will have will be what 
you provide for him. He does not ask you that you make 
him rich ; but do you see to it that he is not made to feel 
mean and uncomfortable. Remember his home. Let the 
sacrificing pastor's wife feel that she shares your loving 
care. See that the parsonage is kept in good condition, and 
the furniture in good repair. It will pay to be generous to 
the mill that grinds the flour, and the flail that threshes out 
the grain. 

In our peculiar economy, which, despite all its drawbacks, 
is perhaps, all in all, the best adapted for usefulness, and, 
possibly, in the lapse of years for comfort also, there is 
special need that you heed these suggestions. The preacher 
often comes to you a stranger. There is no special comfort 
in moving. He comes weary with packing and unpacking. 
He comes from warm hearts, and fresh and tender expres- 
sions of interest. The mother is weary and sad at the sepa- 
ration. The children are noisy with the novelty and restless 
with curiosity. May be some little graves have been left. 
If ever there be a time when this family need thoughtful 



154 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



love it is now. Meet them at the threshold of their new 
home with cordial welcome. Have a fire in the kitchen 
stove, and a refreshing meal awaiting them. Let the rooms 
be swept and garnished for their incoming. It will give 
sauce to all the years, and they will speak of your kindness 
in aftertimes, when age and sorrow have frosted their heads 
and yours. Treasure these things in your memories, and 
they will do you good. 

One thing more : I have spoken of your duty to yourselves 
and your families. It would be an inexcusable fault if I 
should leave the impression on your minds that these duties, 
which I have admitted to be first and chiefest, are the only 
ones ; that having provided amply for these, not simply for the 
bodies, but for the souls also, there is now nothing more for 
you to do but to enjoy life ; that having accumulated enough 
and to spare you may tear down your houses and build greater, 
wherein to store your accumulation, and say to your souls, 
" Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years ; . . . eat, 
drink, and be merry." So thought the ancient fool, and so rea- 
son many fools in our time. Whose, then, are these surplus 
goods, and whose this remaining strength ? I dare not say, 
that when a man has accumulated great possessions there 
should be no relaxation of toil, or that he should not use a 
portion of his gains for costly pleasure for himself and family 
which he could not once enjoy. One of the benefits, yea, 
one of the divine rewards, of diligence in business, and wise 
plans of trade and investment, is the enjoyment of special 
comforts and delights : delights of travel ; delights of works 
of art, of books, of refining relaxations and associations. It 
is not a sin to enjoy the results of our labor — it is a Chris- 
tian duty. It is not a duty to continue enslaving toil when 
we, by honest gain, are able to rise out of it. It would be 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



155 



neither wise nor comely. Better employ those who need 
such work, to whom it will be the best and most profitable 
use of time and energy. Nor is it a duty to live like a pau- 
per when one has the wealth of a prince. To do so would 
be both a sin and a reproach. There is nothing more des- 
picable than a rich boor, except a rich miser. 

What, then, shall be done with this surplus energy, and 
with this surplus wealth ? In general, keep the mind health- 
fully employed, in using it to make more, and in wisely 
disposing of it. Neither this surplus energy nor surplus 
wealth is yours. There is, in fact, no surplus. It is all, to 
the last atom, needed. What is wanted is, that it be given 
the right direction. He to whom it belongs has lodged it 
with you, and, before long, he will make inquisition for 
it ; and what he will demand will be to know what you have 
done with his goods. 

Having provided for your own, a needy world stands at 
your door, and two imperatives confront, waste nothing — 
distribute wisely. These will exercise all the grace and 
wisdom you possess. Waste nothing does not mean enjoy 
nothing beyond the merest necessities of life ; that were to 
reduce you to a miser, and would take much of the best value 
out of your possessions, and is the dictate of narrowness and 
ignorance, not of enlightened piety. It means, spend nothing 
for mere show ; use nothing for mere lust ; destroy nothing 
from mere wasteful extravagance and vanity. Make every 
dollar spent represent some sensible and valuable object ; 
something that will be of real use to yourself, or home, or 
some other worthy object ; but count the dollars well spent 
that aid to build up a noble home and a worthy family. 

Distribute wisely: That means, first, do not retire it from 
usefulness, simply because you have no unsupplied wants; 



156 



C EX TEN A R Y THO UGHTS. 



do not hoard it. That will be to rob God of its benefit for 
the ends for which he intrusts you with it. He wants it, but 
this does not mean that he does not want you to have it because 
you have no personal need for it. He wants you to use it 
and direct it as stewards. This does not mean that you are 
to put it off your hands rashly, or scatter it indiscriminately. 
It does not mean that it is wrong for you to he rich. I de- 
sire to em/pliasize that. If you will use riches wisely, God 
wants you to be rich. It does not mean that you are to save 
nothing for your children. It means this only, that you are 
to save, every cent from waste, and that you are to employ 
every cent in making increase and in use for your children 
and his children in the manner that will do the most possible 
good. Give nothing away foolishly or rashly. If you have 
large possessions, or in proportion to what you have, dis- 
tribute freely, generously, nobly, when you see a real good 
as the probable outcome of the distribution. 

You will see many good uses looking after you, and more 
yet if you are careful to look after them. Do not be dis- 
couraged because there are many unworthy objects suing 
for your charity — there are, also, many worthy ones. Do not 
wait for suitors for your benevolence. Hunt up the needy 
poor — the widows and orphans — whose cries go up into the 
ears of God. You might find some of them near at hand ; 
some that you yourselves knew in sunnier days. Hunt 
them up, and do not grow weary over it. They are left with 
you that in blessing them you may bless yourselves also. 
Hunt up worthy young men. They need your counsels, 
and a small part of the surplus might increase your wealth 
by increasing their chances for happiness. You can make 
no better use of your wealth than by wisely bestowing a 
portion of it on the worthy poor. " There is that scatter- 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



157 



eth and yet increased]." The worthiest objects will be those 
yon have yourself to seek. They will not come crouching, 
but, in lonely places, they wait for your coming, with hearts 
so sad ! Go find them. 

The great world is full of open doors : enter them. 
There is no need that you impoverish yourselves, and there 
is also no danger. " Cast thy bread upon the waters : for thou 
shalt find it after many days." There is a wise way, and it is 
generous. Let your distribution be worthy of you. Do not 
call them gifts or charities. Let others, if they will, so call 
them. Do you, with a greater wisdom, call them the use of 
your Lord's goods, as he hath appointed. I seem in all this 
to be speaking only of, and to, the rich. I do not mean it. 
We all have something. Let us remember, that he is the 
noblest giver, not who gives much, but who gives most lov- 
ingly, in proportion to what he has. Cultivate love for gen- 
erous deeds ; it will broaden and deepen your manhood, it 
will give tone and richness to your piety, it will heighten 
and brighten your life, it will sweeten the experience and 
memories of the dying moment, and it will magnify the Lord 
in you to all eternity. Brothers, some day go alone in some 
sacred stillness, and with God in your thought and the whole 
reach of eternity in view think what is the highest and best 
ideal of a man — of a man's life of manly work — and resolve 
to realize that for yourself. Try ! You will stand higher, 
and be more for ever and ever for the trying. 

I have reserved to the last the most important advice of all, 
that it may be the last in your thought, namely, your duty to 
be earnest spiritual workers in the vineyard of the Lord. 
Many laymen are inclined to excuse themselves at this point. 
In my long pastorate I have noticed two very common faults 
here : One, in a disposition on the part of some to be over- 



15S 



C£XT£XAEY THOUGHTS. 



forward in what is called the spiritual work of the Church 
— by their very promptness excluding others. This be- 
comes a serious fault when the over-zealous brother is not 
exemplary in other respects, and especially when he leaves 
the financial burdens and responsibilities to others not more 
able to bear them than himself : a praying member when not 
a paying member, if able, is a grievous load to carry. The 
other, in a disposition on the part of some to shirk all spirit- 
ual duties, and content themselves with being paying mem- 
bers, but not of the working corps. These are both serious 
faults, which in many ways work harm to the body. It is 
possible to be too forward. Modesty is a cardinal virtue, 
and respect for the rights of others, even in matters of pray- 
ing and speaking in meeting, is a commendable prudence. 
To bear the cross of silence is sometimes more useful than 
the recitation of unprofitable platitudes, or the utterance 
of verbose professions. To those who are addicted to 
taking a public part in every religious assembly, we suggest 
that what to them has become a habit, to others often has 
become a grievance. Occasional self-denial and cross-bearing 
might make their speech more golden. The suggestion will 
do to reflect about. But it was not of this fault that I 
designed to speak, but of the opposite one, the fault of 
habitually refraining from taking any part in the public serv- 
ices of the sanctuary ; this, if not a greater fault than that 
above referred to, is certainly not less. If you were ready to 
do your part, your too-forward brother might learn the greatly 
needed lesson of modesty. Eis fault is partly due to you. 

You prefer silence ; you are not gifted ; you would pre- 
fer to hear others ; it would be a great cross for you to 
speak or lead in prayer ; it would not be proper for you 
to talk in public, because you are so much mixed up with 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



159 



the world, and because your religions experience is so ob- 
scure and unsatisfactory ; these are the common excuses, 
sometimes of the very best people. Are they valid ? Do 
they really excuse you ? Do they not rather indicate a 
neglected line of duties. The modesty which restrains you 
would not fail to give grace to your words. Your want 
of fluency might impart depth and pathos to your prayers. 
Flurry and noise are not proofs of sincerity and earnest- 
ness. In any event, your soul needs and the Church de- 
seives the benefit of your public confessions and supplica- 
tions. If poor and humble, it puts you on a level with 
those who are more prosperous, and creates a common bond 
of sympathy profitable to both. In the house of God there 
are no distinctions. The poor and the rich meet together, 
and one God is father of them all. The words of the lowly, 
seasoned with grace, are often fullest of comfort. If rich 
and prosperous, and much esteemed and influential, the duty 
becomes doubly binding on you for the chastening of your 
own spirit, that it be not proud and elated and carried away 
with worldliness, and that your influence may be wholly 
given to the Church. You need it and your family needs it 
that you be not drifted away into the vain and empty blan- 
dishments of frivolity and fashion. Your wealth is your 
talent, and instead of exempting you from duties, adds grav- 
ity and weight to your responsibilities. God demands more, 
not less, of you. Do not make a mistake here. God wants 
and asks all your influence. Great piety with great wealth 
is, alas ! very rare, but both possible and graceful. You who 
are favored with prosperity have special power of usefulness 
which you cannot guiltlessly sacrifice or neglect. Let your 
position in the Church be as conspicious as it is in the world, 

not simply in its financial support, but in all its spiritual 
11 



160 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



work. Be a working member in the public assemblies, and 
in the every-day walks of life. 

A word on this latter point. The spiritual work of the 
Christian is not limited to the sanctuary — to the words 
spoken in the house of God, in exhortations and 
prayers. It has to do with your closet and with your 
family life. Keep the fires burning by the daily supply of 
fuel from the closet and family altar. Be priests in your 
homes. Wrestle with God for your children. Let grace 
appear in such loveliness in you that your children will be 
attracted by it. Let the sermon of your life and temper 
back up every exhortation of the pulpit. More than any 
body else be the evangel in your own household. Do not 
think it beneath you or unsuitable to you to be known to be 
zealous in religious matters. We do not mean to encourage 
cant or sanctimoniousness — both are detestable ; but carry 
with you a wholesome, manly, and sturdy religiousness into 
all your business. Let there be no uncertainty as to where 
you stand. At suitable times talk frankly with your unpro- 
fessing friends. You, if your lives are noble, will have more 
influence with them than the most eloquent sermons. Study 
in all these things to be wise. There is no duty perhaps so 
difficult as to speak. to our most intimate friends, but there 
is none so likely to be profitable when well timed. There 
are many among them wondering why you do not speak to 
them, even when they seem to be reluctant to hear. Espe- 
cially if you are respected among the people who know you — 
if they look up to you with honor, it will be almost sure to 
win if you, when alone, speak gentle words of interest and 
affection. Young men especially will receive kindly advice 
when coming from your heart and lips. There are sons and 
daughters of your friends who have an open ear for your 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



161 



counsel, and more especially the children of friends that are 
dead. Seek them out, and blessings will come to your own 
soul. Do not be ashamed to work for souls ; carry them on 
your heart, and in the day of the Lord Jesus it will not be 
the minister alone who will have sheaves. Some will sur- 
prise you by relating in your ears the story of how your 
friendly words drew them — that word gently spoken, which 
at the time seemed to have done nothing. A loving word 
poured into the solitary ear is never lost. 

And now, brothers, I bring these advices to a close, with 
the earnest desire that you will not forget them, and with 
prayers for you and your homes, that special benedictions 
may rest upon you. We can live but one life. No day 
once gone ever returns. Mistakes cannot be fully corrected. 
Neglects cannot be repaired. Opportunities once gone do 
not come back. A misdeed is a misdeed forever. In the 
light of these facts weigh the problems of life. Behold the 
great work set before you — the work of building once for 
eternity. See the results, rising and augmenting for ever 
and ever. Give heed. Gird you up like men. Be sublime. 
« Work . . . while it is day : the night cometh." The 
morning also cometh — the great and glorious morning, that 
is followed by a night never again — the harvest morning for 
all the days of toil. See to it, brothers, that you so sow that 
you shall come with rejoicing, bringing the sheaves. Only 
those things will abide which are planted and builded in 
God. If there is any thing which we shall look back to 
with pleasure from that beautiful home over there, it will 
be those things in which we were manliest, truest, bravest, 
down here. If there is any thing that will most sweeten 
the ever-unfol dings of the immortal years, it will be to find 
sharing in our rapture those who will never forget some 



162 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



lonely moment made bright by our loving care. .Nor will 
He forget — " he that sitteth on the throne." We work to- 
day not for to-day. Ye men of God, catch the inspiration of 
" your high calling of God in Christ Jesus." Take Him for 
your model who gave himself for you ! He holds forth the 
crown, dare to take it. 

You will be tempted to selfishness ; you will feel the 
pull of the world at your affections ; you will see the crowd 
drifting in the opposite direction ; you will get weary some- 
times ; you will hear secret voices suggesting that there is an 
easier way ; you will see others failing of duty, and leaving 
you to carry their burdens ; and, after all, you will see some 
of your dearest hopes blasted : your children may not be a 
credit to you ; those who receive your benefits may prove 
ungrateful; your motives may be impugned; adversities may 
come : but what of all this. There have been Jobs whose mis- 
fortunes have never been written. The truest and most faith- 
ful have more than once waded through the deepest waters, 
and the most unselfish and benevolent have not a few times 
been reduced to a crust. What, though having been faith- 
ful, yours should be such a case ; what, though any or all 
of these sorrows should come to yon, it will not prove that 
a life built in faith is a failure ; it will not prove that duti- 
fulness is not rewarded, or is ever unwise. The probabilities 
are, that even here most of the ends of right living will be 
secured, though they may all fail ; but not one whose life is 
so built shall fail of his reward. Form the habit of measur- 
ing all things in the light of eternity, and of measuring their 
value by what God thinks of them. That will answer all 
questions. It is safe to follow where he points the way, and 
there is no safety where he has lifted signals of danger. 

Brother ministers and laymen, in these addresses I have 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



163 



mainly called your attention to your respective duties, and 
to motives to the faithful performance of them. May I 
now, in conclusion, add some words of warning ? The inter- 
ests you have been called to contemplate are not ordinary in- 
terests. You have seen and felt how great they are ; how 
transcendentally sacred ; how far-reaching ; how they affect 
your dearest welfare for time ; how they spread out over all 
eternity ; how they concern humanity ; how God himself is 
interested in them. 

There are some points of danger to which your attention 
ought to be called. Interests do not prosper simply because 
they are great and deserve to prosper. The dangers often 
are in corresponding ratios with the interests involved. It 
is so here. Though God is himself the head of the Church, 
and though his heart is set on its welfare, and though all his 
power should be employed for its success, it is, nevertheless, 
beleaguered with many dangers. It is the purpose of its 
Founder that it shall take the world, but he has made its suc- 
cess depend on its fidelity to him. It is nothing without him, 
and he will dwell in it and work through it and for it only as 
it is faithful to him. It is an easy thing for the Church to 
lose its power. Of this the Greek Church, spread over wide 
regions, is an example to-day ; likewise the Romish Church. 
It may be doubted whether they are not worse, or but little 
better, than absolute heathenism. There are other Churches 
which have degenerated to a scarcely less deplorable condi- 
tion. As with the individual, so is it easy for the Church to 
miss the way. The descent to the inferno is sometimes 
rapid and noiseless, and the gulf is reached before the dan- 
ger is apprehended. Signs of apparent prosperity are often 
but symptoms of real degeneracy ; and when the Church is 
dizzy with joy over its assumed successes, its joy often is 



164 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS 



but the wild frenzy of delirium which denotes approaching 
death. Much of the opposition to Christianity has its source 
here : it is not opposition to the real, so much as to the apos- 
tate and degenerate, Church which has made the name odious. 
The Church is detested because it has become detestable, and 
the hate is turned against Christianity, which it is assumed 
to represent, but of which it has, in fact, become only a sad 
travesty. The worst foe the Church has is often the Church 
itself. It becomes its own accuser and its own executioner. 
If dead, it is worthless ; if perverted, its zeal becomes a con- 
suming fire of mischief and hate, and all things beautiful 
and holy turn to rottenness and death under its manipula- 
tion. Its conservatism becomes the conservatism of priestly 
fables, and its aggressiveness the aggressiveness of worldly 
ambition and despotic power ; it is thenceforth the enemy of 
progress and liberty, perverting truth, forging gyves for 
conscience, and enslaving souls and bodies with fetters of 
superstition and tithings. There is perpetual danger that 
the Church either become dead or perverted — animate with 
a life which is worse than death. 

If we take warning from the past, we shall find admonitory 
signs of danger ominously hovering about our own Church 
at the present moment. The rocks which threaten us are 
not concealed ; they lie in full view ; they are right abreast 
of us ; they stand out thick and threatening across the mouth 
of our second century. Will we rush madly, with all sails 
set, upon them ? or will we have the wisdom to clear them, 
and magnificently sail down another century of glorious his- 
tory ? Is it not well that we look carefully about us, broth- 
ers, and take our reckoning ? 

We were once little. It is but yesterday that we passed 
over the brook with two bands. We have now become a 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



165 



great host. None of the tribes of Israel spread more tents 
than we. Our camp-fires encompass the globe. 

Our fathers lived in cabins in the wilderness and earned a 
scanty living by rude but honest industries. We dwell in 
ceiled houses and live in state on the large accumulations of 
wealth rapidly acquired. They were rude, but honest and 
hardy and self-denying, eschewing pride and pomp and the 
empty vanities of worldly pleasures and amusements and 
fashions, not ashamed of honest toil and humble fare ; loving 
truth, and courageous in adversity and poverty : we have 
become refined and cultured, and luxury, ease, and elegance 
have become at once our bane and our necessity ; the dull 
routine of daily toil with small returns has become a badge 
of abjectness, and we rush into the perilous ventures and ex- 
citements of commerce and speculation in stocks and mer- 
chandise ; the theater and the opera-house, and expensive 
recreations, have become our pastime, and consume all our 
thoughts and moments not given to business ; we are born 
and grow up and die in unhealthy competition and strifes ; 
and all life is keyed on a false and discordant note : the rush 
of worldliness and mammon has set in, and threatens to 
sweep away and swallow up all the homely virtues that 
made our fathers noble. There is fever in the air. Conta- 
gion lies concealed in the customs of the times. The ethics 
of trade are corrupted and corrupting. Money outweighs 
character. Equipage and state are more prized than domes- 
tic virtue and honor. What is called society is fast becom- 
ing a painted harlot, whose breath is corrupt and deadly. 
Positions of honor and trust are bought and sold in the 
market. The old manly and womanly virtues have a price 
set on them. Gilded ignorance, veneered impiety, sham 
honor, pass more current than genuine merit. This is the 



166 



CEXTEXARY THOUGHTS. 



fashion of the times in which we live. Will the Church be 
able to stem this tide ? "Will she be able to hold her stand- 
ards firm amid the hurtling ? Will she be able to keep her 
children from being washed down by the current ? That 
there are dangers none can deny. That they call for skillful 
piloting and robust and manly prowess none can question. 
The pulpit will need all its force, and the pew all its 
strength ; the pulpit must be faithful to the pew, and the 
pew must be steadfast in its support of the pulpit, or our 
Church will go down the rapids and be swallowed by the 
gulf, as so many have done before, leaving but a worthless 
wreck behind. 

" The Church of God is to day courting the world. Its 
members are trying to bring it down to the level of the 
ungodly. The ball, the theater, nude and lewd art, social 
luxuries, with all their loose moralities, are making inroads 
into the sacred inclosure of the Church, and as a satisfaction 
for all this worldliness, Christians are making a great deal of 
Lent and Easter and Good Friday and church ornamenta- 
tion. It is the old trick of Satan. The Jewish Church 
struck on that rock, the Romish Church was wrecked on 
the same, and the Protestant Church is fast reaching the 
same doom." 

Our great dangers, as we see them, are : assimilation to 
the world, neglect of the poor,' substitution of the form for 
the fact of godliness, abandonment of discipline, a hireling 
ministry, an impure gospel, which, summed up, is a fashion- 
able Church. That Methodism should be liable to such an 
outcome, and that there should be signs of it in a hundred 
years from the " sail-loft," seems almost the miracle of his- 
tory ; but who that looks about him to-day can fail to see 
the fact ? 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



167 



We have reached a point where two ways meet. It is 
with us to decide which of the two ways we will take. 
There are signs of indecision. If we accept the lure our 
history will soon be written, and it will be one of the sad- 
dest in Christian annals. Our economy is not framed on 
the idea of a time-serving and worldly Church. It will be 
an obstruction, and we shall not be able to compete with 
the social forces about us, and with other claimants to favor 
on that line. That which made us great, taken from us, 
will leave us poor and contemptible. Decay, once set in, 
will be rapid, and the boast of our enemies will be ful- 
filled — that "we are but a rush fire — an ephemeral excite- 
ment — a temporary wave of enthusiasm which, subsiding, 
leaves no monument." Over the doors of our great 
churches and institutions will be written "a spent force;" 
and the fragment that will survive will be " mockery and 
derision." Will we have it so ? Isaac Taylor said that a 
moral wave measured eighty years — forty to reach its crest 
and break, and forty to subside and be lost. He allowed 
eighty years for the Methodistic phenomenon, when he pre- 
dicted it would vanish and disappear. He made a mistake. 
Is it only the mistake of .a few years ? 

The other way lies open to us. We have grown to our 
present status as a great religious force. We were born as 
a spiritual power. We were organized to spread scriptural 
holiness over the earth. Our mission was to the poor — to 
raise up the lowly ; to care for the neglected ; to preach a 
gospel of salvation from all sin — a free, present, full, con- 
scious salvation ; to build up a consecrated, unworldly, holy 
Church. It was not a crusade against wealth or culture or 
the highest social elevation, but it aimed at the subordina- 
tion of all these to Christ. Thus the Church won its first 



168 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



victories. Thus it was a power which overcame all op- 
positions and moved the age and the world. Thus it was 
that it proved one of the greatest moral forces since apos- 
tolic times, and built its temples of learning and religion in 
the four quarters of the globe. Thus it is that it has become 
recognized wherever Christianity is known as its highest ex- 
pression — " Christianity in earnest." 

Let it be true to its traditions and loyal to its ancient 
spirit and follow its old paths, and its glory will wax 
brighter and brighter in the coming century. It is for us 
to show how a people, animated simply by a religious spirit, 
can rise from the lowliest to the highest social condition 
without losing the simplicity of piety ; to show how the 
greatest business energy and largest accumulations of wealth 
and most elaborate culture and best enjoyment of all things 
earthly can go hand in hand with the simplicity of a Christly 
character, and the deepest and truest expression of religion ; 
to show how real godliness, the highest realization of Chris- 
tian experience and life, can enjoy and sanctify all the best 
things the world has to give — its best refinement, its deepest 
and greatest learning, its purest taste, its noblest art. Every 
thing that is worthy and desirable in the estimation of good 
sense and virtue. It is for us to show that true Christianity 
imposes no restraints except such as ought to be imposed, 
and requires no service except such as works to the highest 
good of the individual and of universal society ; that it 
makes the best characters, the best homes, the best nation, 
and, therefore, that it should be lived plain and simple, with- 
out compromise or accommodation ; that there can be the 
truest piety without mopishness, seriousness without morose- 
ness, the renunciation of improper pleasures without sadness, 
godliness with cheerfulness ; that, in a word, a true churchly 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS. 



169 



life is the highest expression of the most exalted manhood. 
It is all summed up in the inspired phrase, " Whatsoever 
things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever 
things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever 
things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report ; if 
there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on 
these things." Phil, iv, 8. If we do these things we shall 
stand and be worthy to stand, but if we depart from them, 
" mene, mene, tekel upharsin " will be written against us, 
and the world will have no further need of us. Let us take 
warning by the fate of others, and hasten with all diligence 
to strengthen the threatened places ; and may He whose 
the Church is, build us more and more in strength and 
beauty, and to his name shall be the glory for ever and ever. 
Amen. 



APPENDIX. 



Note A. 

Xo reformatory movement can be traced to its real original root. 
"Were it possible to find the most primitive source of Methodism, pos- 
sibly the mother of the Wesleys, rather than the sons, might claim the 
honor. Doubtless from her came the genius and much of the spirit- 
ual influences which appear so remarkably in Methodist history. 
Methodism was planted before the "Holy Club" was organized, or 
even initiated. The meetings, which became historic, and branded 
the participants with the title. ""The Holy Club." commenced as early 
as 1736. possibly 1 Too : but long before that the seeds were planted 
which then commenced- to take root in the hearts of the young Wesleys 
and their associates. 



Note B. 

I subjoin some tables, collated from the work of Dr. Dorchester, 
which ought to be found in every. Christian library, and some from the 
Centenary volume, which all Methodists especially ought to own. 

Churches axd Ministers ra 1775. 

Dexomixatioxs. Churches. Ministers. 

Conaresrational TOO 575 

Episcopalian, Protestant { 300 250 

Baptist 380 350 

Presbyterian 300 140 

Lutheran 60 25 

German Reformed 60 25 

Dutch Reformed 60 25 

Associate Reformed 20 13 

Moravian 8 12 

Methodist 1 30 20 



Total 1,918 1,435 

* The Minutes for 1S75 give 20 preachers to circuits, and 3,4IS members. Each circuit comprised several socie- 
ties, or Church organizations. 



CENT EN A R Y Til 0 UG 11 TS—A PPENDIX. 



in 



Churches, Ministers, and Communicants, 1880. 



Evangelical Denominations. 



Baptist, 4 Regular, North 5 . . 

South 5 ... 
" Colored 5 

Total 



Baptist, Free-will 6 

" " Minor bodies 7 

" Anti-mission 4 

i" Seventh-day 8 

" " German (estimated) . 
" Six-Principle 4 



Church Organ- 
izations or Con- 
gregations.! 

6,782 
13,827 
5,451 



Minis- 
ters^ 

5,280 
8,227 
3,089 



Members or 

Cominuni- 

cants.3 

608,556 
1,026,413 
661,358 



26,060 


16,596 


2,296,327 


1,432 


1,213 


78,012 


25,000 


900 


400 


40,000 


94 


110 


8,539 


25 




3,000 


20 


12 


2,000 


9 28,531 


18,331 


2,452,878 



Congregational (Orthodox( 10 

Disciple 11 

Dunker 12 

Episcopal, Protestant 13 

" Reformed 15 

Evangelical Association 16 

Friend, Evangelical (partly estimated) . 
Lutheran, 17 General Council. . 

" General Synod, South 

" " North 

" Independent 

" Synodical Conference 

Total Lutheran 



'5,553 



3,654 

3,782 
200 

3,432 
100 
893 
200 
624 
122 
841 
369 

1,176 

3,132 



384,332 
591,821 

60,000 
338,333 
9,448 
112,197 

60,000 
184,974 

18,223 
123,813 

69,353 
554,505 



'950,868 



Methodist Episcopal 20 

South 22 

" " African 23 

Zion 24 

" Colored 25 

Congregational 26 

Free 27 

Primitive 27 

Protestant 26 • 

Reformed (estimated) 

** Union American 25 

u Wesleyan in United States 28 

Total Methodist 29 29,278 



12,096 
3,887 
1,738 
1,800 
638 
225 
260 
52 
1,385 

ioi 

400 



21 1,755,018 
832,189 
387,566 
300,000 
112,938 
13,750 
12,318 
3,369 
135,000 
3,000 
2,250 
17,087 



22,582 21 3,574,485 



l^ennonite (estimated) . 
Moravian 27 



Presbyterian, General Assembly 30 

South 30 . 

" United, of North America 30 . . 

" Cumberland 30 , 

" Synod of Reformed 30 

" General Synod of Reformed 31 

" Welsh Calvinistic 32 

Associate Synod of South 30 . . . 
" Other bodies (estimated) 



300 


350 


50,000 


84 


94 


9,491 


5,489 


5,044 


578,671 


1,928 


1,060 


120,028 


813 


684 


82,119 


2,457 


1,386 


111,863 


117 


111 


10,473 


50 


32 


6,800 


137 


100 


11,000 


112 


121 


6,686 






10.000 



Total Presbyterian 



11,103 



8,538 



172 



CEXTEXAR Y THO UGHTS— APPENDIX. 



Evangelical Denominations. 

Reformed Church (late Dutch) 30 

" (late German) 33 

Second Advent 34 

Seventh-day 30 

United Brethren 36 

Wiunebrennarian, or Church of God 4 

German Evangelical Church Union, Bible Christians, 
Schwenkf elders, Bible Union, River Brethren, little 
known (estimated) 

Aggregate 



Church Organ- 
izations or Con- 
gregations.* 

510 
1,405 

800 
35 040 
4,524 

400 



97,090 



Minis- 
Urs.2 

544 
748 
600 
144 
2.196 
350 



69,870 



Members or 
Communi- 
cants. 3 

80,208 
155. bo? 

70,000 

15,570 
157,835 

30,000 



25.000 
10,065.963 



1 In some cases the congelations are reported ; in others only the organized Churches. 

2 Local preachers and licentiates not included. 

3 A few denominations reckon baptized children as members, but by far the smaller part. 
* " Baptist Year-Book," for 1881. 

s Divided on the basis of the two General Conventions, North and South, which are as separate as the Meth 
odist and the Presbyterian Churches, North and South. The colored associations are also independent of the 
others. 

6 Free-wiU Baptist " Register," for 1881. ' Ibid., 1880. 

8 " Minutes of Seventh-d3y Baptist Convention," for 1880. 

9 Probably to some extent congregations. 

10 Official Statistics, furnished by Rev. A. H. Quint, D.D., 1881. 

" Furnished by Rev. F. \V. Green, Corresponding Secretary of the Missionary Society of the Disciples. 
12 Official returns for 1ST7. 

>3 "Church Almanac for 1S31." Another Almanac, a few more. 
" Parishes. 

is Statistics published after late Convention. 
16 "Almanac Evangelical Association," 1S81. 
M " Lutheran Church Almanac," 18S1. 

18 Congregations. 

19 Including baptized children in some Synods. 

20 To December, 1880. 

21 Including ministers, because not reckoned elsewhere as communicants, and also probationers. 
22" Almanac of Methodist Episcopal Church, South," for 1SS1. 

23 « Official Report," for 1880. 

2* Furnished by Rev. R. G. Dyson, a prominent minister of said Churcn. 

25 « MethodUt Almanac," 1881. 

26 Furnished for 1SS0 by a leading minister. 
-1 " Minutes," for 1880. 

23 Minutes of said Church for 1879. 

^ Church organizations of the Methodist Churches are not published in the "Minutes." and therefore cannot 
be accurately gathered. The "United States Census" reported 25,278 for all Methodist bodies in 1870. It is a 
moderate estimate to suppose that they have since increased 4,000. One branch of Methodism has increased its 
church edifices 3,700 since 1S70. 

30 "Official Minutes," 1880. 

31 Furnished by Rev. David Steele, D.D., Philadelphia. 

32 Report of the Second Council of the Presbyterian Alliance, p. 963. 

33 " Almanac of Reformed Church," 1881. 
3« Estimated by leading Advent officials. 

35 Congregations. 

36 " Almanac of United Brethren," for 1881. 




410,900,000. 



50 millions. 



CEXTEXA R Y TJW TIGHTS — A PPEXDTX. 



173 



General Summary of Methodists. 

The following summaries have been compiled from the latest official statistics reported 
by the several branches of the great Wesleyan Methodist family. Those of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church are to January 1, 1883, and include the official numerical returns of the 
Fall Conferences of 1882 and the Spring Conferences of 1883. Those of the Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church, South, are for 1882. Those of the Canadian, British, and affili- 
ating Conferences are 'for 1883. In two or three of the Churches the numbers of local 
preachers are "estimated;" but in each of those by distinguished members of large 
observation in the respective denominations. 



I. Episcopal Methodists in United States. 


Itinerant 
Ministers. 


Local 
Preachers, 


Lay 




12,654 


12,337 


1,799,593 


Methodist Episcopal Church, South 

African Methodist Episcopal Church* 


4,045 


5,869 


877,299 


1,832 


9 760 


391,044 


African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church 


2,000 


2,750 


300,000 




1,046 


683 


155,000 




953 


599 


119,758 




1,257 


963 


159,547 


TTninn Ampr"'n£ivj ATptriorlwf T 1, m*Qpn'ric»l OViiit , /^Vi 


112 


40 


3 500 


Total Episcopal Methodists in United States 


23,899 


33,001 


3,805,741 


II. IVon-Episcopal Methodists in United States. 








Methodist Protestant Church 


1,358 


1,010 


123,054 


American Wesleyan Church. .... .... 


267 


215 


23 590 




263 


326 


12,719 




27 


162 


3,716 




25 


27 


5,000 






23 


20,000 


Total Non-Episcopal Methodists in United States 


1 940 


1,763 


188,079 


III. Methodists in Canada. 








The Methodist Church of Canada 


1,216 


3,261+ 


128,644 




259 


255 


25,671 




89 


246 


8,090 




79 


197 


7,398 




45 


20 


2 100 


Total Methodists in Canada .... 


1 688 


1,979 


171,903 


IV. Methodists in Great Britain and Missions. 










1,917 


14,183 


441.484 


385 




70,747 




1,147 


15',9S2 


196,480 




183 


1,271 


29,299 




551 




8,663 




391 


3,417 


84,152 


Bible Christians (including Australia) 


228 


1,909 


28,624 


Total Methodists in Great Britain and Missions 


4,807 


36,762 


859,449 


V. Wesleyan Affiliating Conferences. 








Irish Weslevan Conference 


239 




25,050 


French Wesleyan Conference 


196 




2,024 




449 


4',480 


69.392 




167 




26,038 




1,051 


4,480 


126,504 


Grand Total of Ministers and Lay Members. 










25,839 


34,714 


3,993,820 


Dominion of Canada 


1,688 


1,979 


171,903 




4,807 


36,762 


859,449 




1,051 


4,480 


69,392 




33,385 


77,935 


5,094,564 



Note.— Total Methodist population, (estimated,) 25,472,370. 



* The latest returns. Exclusive oi local preachers in New Brunswick Conference. 



1U 



CENTENARY THO UGHTS— APPENDIX. 



Numerical Growth by Quarter Centuries. — Beginning with the close of 
1784, the date of the organization of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and reckon- 
ing by periods of twenty-five years, we have the following tabular exhibit: 



Total at Church organization, in 1784. . . 

Total at close of first quarter century, in 1809. . . 
Total at close of second quar. century, in 1834. . . 
Total at close of third quar. century, in 1859. . . 
Total at close of 23 years, or in 1882. . . 



Itinerant 
Preach its. 

83 
59? 
2,265 
6,877 
12,365 



Lay 
Members. 

14,988 
163,038 
638,784 
974,345 
1,742,021 



Increase in Incren?p 
Preachers. Meinbe 



514 148,050 

1,668 475,746 

4,612 335,561 

5,488 767,676 



During the third quarter century (namely, in 1845) the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, South, was organized, and hence the apparent increase was not so great 
during that period. 

Lay Membership by Decades. — The first Methodist Society (composed of — 
members) was formed in the autumn of 1766. The first decade closed with 1777. 
The numerical summaries for the several full decades since that period give the 
following figures : 



Year. 


Traveling 
Preachers. 


IvCREASE 

of Preachers. 


Members. 


Increase 
of Members. 


1766 










1776 


"24 


**24 


4*,92i 


4,921 




117 


93 


20,689 


15,768 


1796 


293 


176 


56,664 


35,975 


1806..... 


452 


159 


130,570 


73,906 


1816 


695 


243 


214,235 


83,665 


1826 


1,406 


711 


360,800 


146,565 


1836 


2,928 


1,522 


650,103 


289,303 


1846 


3,582 


654 


644,229 


dec. 5,874 


1856 


5,877 


2,295 


870,327 


156,098 


1866 


7,576 


1,699 


1,032,184 


231,857 


1876 


11,361 


3,785 


1,613,560 


581,376 



During the decade 1836-1846 (in 1845) the separation of the Methodist Episco- 
pal Church, South, took place. That Church embraced in 1845, the date of its 
separate organization, a total of 462,428 members. 

Growth of Lay Membership compared with Population", instituting a com- 
parison by taking the decades corresponding with those of the United States Census 
reports, we have the following table : 



1790. 
1800. 
1810. 
1820. 
1830. 
1840. 
1850. 
1860. 
1870. 
1880. 



Population. 


Increase. 


Gain per cent, 
in Population. 


3,929,214 
5,308,483 
7,239,881 
9,633,822 
12,866,020 
17,069,453 
23,191,876 
31,443,321 
38,558,371 
50,152,866 


1,379,269 
1,931,398 
2,393,941 
3,232,198 
4,203,433 
6,122,423 
8,251,445 
7,115,050 
11,594,495 


35. i 6 
26.38 
33.06 
32.51 
33.52 
35.83 
35.11 
22.65 
30.06 



Gain per cent, 
in Church. 



12.60 
168.96 
48.87 
83.21 
68.38 
* 

44.20 
37.47 
27.48 



The progress of Christianity during the past one hundred years is one of the most pal- 
pable of all the phases of the world's history. The following tahle,t published as a con- 
jectural, hut probable, estimate of the progressive increase of the number of Christians 
in the world, in the successive centuries, intelligently made up from carefully collated 

* The figures are omitted here hecause during the decade then closing the loss by separation of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church, South, took place, 
t See Ferussac, " Bull. Univ. Geog.," January, 1827, p. 4. 



CENTE2fA R Y THO If GETS— APPENDIX. 



175 



data, has been generally accepted. For the period more especially under consideration 
— the time since the birth of Protestantism— the following are the figures : 

1500,* 100,000,000 Christians. I 1700, 155,000,000 Christians. 

1600, 125,000,000 " I 1800, 200,000,000 " 

Before 1847 Rev. Sharon Turner said : t "In this nineteenth century the real number 
of the Christian population of the world is nearer to three hundred millions, and is visibly 
much increasing from the missionary spirit and exertions which are now distinguishing 
the chief Protestant nations of the world." 

The latest estimates are as follows : 

Year. Christians. Authorities. 

1830 228,000,000 Malte Brun. 

1840 300,000,000 Rev. Sharon Turner, D.D. 

1850 342,000,000 Rev. Robert Baird, D.D. 

1876 394,000,000 Professor Schem, LL.D. 

1880 410,900,000 Professor Schem, LL.D. 

The above are probably the most reliable representations of the later progress of 
Christianity in the whole world, showing its wonderful growth in later years, far exceed- 
ing its previous progress In fifteen hundred years it gained one hundred millions; 
then, in three hundred years, it gained one hundred millions more ; then, in seventy-nine 
years, it gained two hundred and ten millions more. In the last seventy-nine years it 
gained as much as in the eighteen centuries previous to 1800. During the nearly ten 
centuries of almost exclusive papal dominion Christianity gained only about eighty-five 
millions. Since the birth of Protestantism, a period about one third as long, it has gained 
nearly four times as much. And since the great religious quickening of Protestantism 
under the Wesleys and Whitefield, in the middle of the last century, it has gained two 
hundred and thirty-five millions. 

But the portion of the earth's population under Christian governments has increased 
even more rapidly than the number of Christians, as will be seen by the following well- 
established figures : 

Under Christian Governments. 

Year. Population. Authorities. 

1500 100,000,000 Rev. Sharon Turner, D.D, 

1700 155,000,000 Rev. Sharon Turner, D.D. 

1830 387,788,000 Adrian Balbi. 

1876 685,459,411 Prof. Schem, LL.D. 

These figures show the wonderful growth of the Christian nations, the enlargement of 
their national domains, and the increase of their populations. They demonstrate the 
rapid extension of Christian influences and the Christian subjugation of the world. 
Nearly seven times the number of people are under the control of Christian nations as at 
the opening of the sixteenth century, when Protestantism arose. The increase in the 
one hundred and forty years since Wesleyanism arose in England has been five hundred 
millions, equal to more than one third of the population of the globe. 

But has this wonderful increase been in the Greek, or the Roman Catholic, or the Prot- 
estant form of Christianity? Let us see. The following table, based upon statistics 



* The statistics of the earlier periods are as follows : 
Christians. 

First century 500,000 

Second " 2,000,000 

Third " 5,000,000 

Fourth 10,000,000 

Fifth " 15,000,000 

Sixth " 20,000,000 

Seventh " 25,000,c00 

See Mr. Turner's "H story of the Anglo-Saxons." 



Christians. 

Eighth century 30,000,n00 

Ninth " 40,000,00(1 

Tenth " 50,000,000 

Eleventh " 70,000,000 

Twelfth " 80,000,000 

Thirteenth " 75,000,000 

Fourteenth " 80,000,000 



t " History of the Anglo-Saxons," sixth edition, vol. iii, p. 484, note. 

12 



176 



C EX TEX A R Y THO UGHTS— APPENDIX. 



furnished in Seaman's "Progress of Nations," will show the relative strength of these 
forms of Christianity in the world in the year 1700 : • 

Pop'n under Pop'n under Pop'n under 

Countries. Roman Catholic Greek Church Protestant 

Governments. Governments. Governments. 

Italy and islands 18,000,000 

Spain and Portugal 13.500,000 W.W. 

France and colonies 20,700,000 

Great Britain and colonies 9 000 666 

Ireland 2,400,000 

Holland and colonies 1,800 666 

Belgium 1,400,000 ' 

Prussia 7,500,666 

Denmark and colonies 1,300,000 

Sweden and Norway 2,400'000 

Germany 8.5(X)'000 

Switzerland , 1,500,000 

Austria and Hunsrary 18,000,000 

Poland 3,000,000 

Spanish and Portuguese America 13,000,000 

Russia 17,000.000 

Greece and isles 12,000,000 

Africa, etc 4,000,000 



Total 90,000,000 33,000,000 32,000,000 

In the year 1500 about 80,000,000 of people were under Roman Catholic governments 
and not far from 20,000,000 under the Greek Church governments. The following esti- 
mates by Adrian Balbi, for 1830, and by Prof. Schem, for 1876, will serve our purpose : 

Pop'n under Pop'n under Pop'n under 

Roman Catholic Greek Church Protestant Total. 

Governments. Governments. " Governments. 

1500 80,000,000 20,000.000 100,000,000 

1700 90,000,000 33,000,000 32,000.000 155,000,000 

1830 134,164,000 60,000,000 193,624,000 387,788,000 

1876 180,787,905 96,101,894 408,569,615 635,459,411 



Note C. 

The facility with -which transfers are made from the pulpit of one 
Church to that of another, while on some accounts, perhaps, a thing to 
be commended, may, nevertheless, be matter of questionable desirable- 
ness, and indeed doubtful tendency. The path from one fold to 
another will certainly be too easy and broad when it makes no account 
of consistency — when, for personal convenience or money, a minister 
barters his convictions and gives the lie to all his former sacred pro- 
fessions. Churches that make little account of honesty or ministerial 
fidelity may hold out premiums to traitors, but their gains will be 
dearly acquired. Denominational comity is worth something. There 
have been and still will be cases where, without reproach, a minister 
will seek and find a home in another Church than that which he first 
joined, but the cases are few ; and when changes are sought for other 



CENTENA R Y THO UG HTS—A PPENDIX. 



177 



than real reasons, they should be obstructed and discouraged. Meth- 
odism has neither respect nor premiums for changelings, whether they 
seek her pulpits or go from them. We commend the views of Dr. 
John Hall on this subject as timely and wise. 



Note D. 

The law of stewardship is one which ought to receive the careful 
and conscientious study of every one who aspires to be a consistent 
Christian. It deserves more than the passing notice which we are able 
to bestow upon it here. The hint will have accomplished much if it 
shall lead the reader to a prayerful and searching examination of its 
relations to his personal duty and to his deepest spiritual life. The 
use of goods, and of influence of every kind, like the use of faculty, not 
only indicates but also creates character. We have not meant in the 
preceding statement to be understood that the law of benevolence for 
others should stand in abeyance until all of our imaginary or even real 
personal wants are fully supplied, but rather that other claims cannot 
take precedence. It might be a duty to divide a crust in conceivable 
emergencies, and it is a constant law that we should go beyond our- 
selves in our sympathies and devisings, helping others when possible, 
without absolute neglect of personal needs. When personal needs are 
supplied, the residue of our possessions becomes a sacred trust. The 
divine law requires that we should husband it carefully and employ it 
to our best ability for the promotion of all such ends as we believe will 
be for the glory of God, for the good of man, and for those only. Let 
it not be supposed that in this statement we mean to imply that until 
personal wants are supplied there are no duties to others. We are in- 
dicating one branch of duties, namely, the use of property. The duty 
of benevolent feeling and disposition to do good, and the actual and 
constant purpose to do good in every possible way, begins with our 
moral consciousness and terminates never. 



178 



CENTENA R Y THO U GETS — APPENDIX. 



Note E. 

One of the saddest things we meet, as we journey through the world, 
is a home where there are no signs of love. We cannot doubt that 
often love exists when there are no external signs, but the absence of 
its manifestation is at the same time a calamity and a sin. It is the 
duty not only for the husband to love the wife, and the parent the 
child, but also to habitually give such proof of it as will make the 
home cheerful and happy. The wife, who was wooed with tenderness, 
has a right not to be treated with either neglect or harshness. The 
child has a right not simply to protection and care, but to parental 
affection, and the daily expression of it in word and act. It is well for 
the home where the husband and wife keep up the courtship days till 
the grave separates them, and where the sons and daughters receive the 
good-night kiss and the morning blessing. There is a charm in deli- 
cate attentions, which gilds the rough every-day intercourse and em- 
ployments of life with a heavenly sheen. One sweet word lightens a 
load of care. A single tender look often dissipates a cloud of sorrow, 
and turns a dark day into a bright one. Try it, Christian husbands 
and fathers. Keep up the love-days; talk together of the halcyon 
hours when you started on the journey of life together — when you took 
the young bride from the shelter of a loving home. You do not love 
her less now with her gray hairs and furrowed cheek. Tell her so, 
often as the evening shades gather around her declining years. Let 
the children see that old age is neither cheerless nor loveless. Do not 
let the time come when your daughters grow too old for loving 
caresses, or your sons withhold the freedom of a perfect and trusting 
confidence. Keep sunshine in the home. 

Pleasant words and loving acts fill the home with sweet fragrance. 
They cost nothing, but millions of dollars cannot buy what they sup- 
ply, nor can all that wealth furnishes make home sweet without them. 
No study pays better than the daily study of the art of being agreea- 
ble to those who sit with us at the table and share our beds. 1 1 Prac- 
tice makes perfect. 1 ' Practice the art daily, and it will become natural 
as the heart beats, and the home will be as the garden of the Lord, 
filled with music and fragrance all the day. 

There are homes where no word of praise is ever spoken. The good 



CENTENARY THO UGHTS— APPENDIX. 



179 



wife toils away at her monotonous drudgery, but her husband, though 
perhaps inwardly acknowledging her efficiency, never thinks to say he 
does so, or to express a wish that her burden should be lightened. The 
children are reproved and rebuked for every fault, the rod also beings 
introduced when it seems necessary, but they have no word of praise 
for what they have done obediently and properly. Their right doing 
is taken as a matter of course ; their wrong doing is treated as a matter 
of discipline. It is no wonder if such homes have clouds come over 
them, or if in the hearts of all the inmates the sadness lodges that 
shows itself in their faces and behavior. 

Christian parents, think on these things. The ideal home is the 
topmost realization of Christ's kingdom on earth, its brightest flower, 
its ripest, richest fruit — the very consummation of our Lord's prayer 
for his Church : ' ' That they all may be one ; as thou, Father, art in 
me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world 
may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest 
me I have given them ; that they may be one, even as we are one : I in 
them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one ; and 
that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, 
as thou hast loved me. Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast 
given me, be with me where I am ; that they may behold my glory, 
which thou hast given me : for thou lovedst me before the foundation 
of the world. O righteous Father, the world hath noc known thee: 
but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me. 
And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it ; that the 
love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them. " 
John xvii, 21-26. 

Blessed consummation ! one forever in and with the Lord. Make 
home sweet. Let no bruises or scars be carried from its holy precincts. 
Let not the grave which shrines our dead reproach us for unkindness 
when they were at home with us. Let there be no words we should 
wish unspoken when the ears are sealed that should hear them. 
Speak gentle words, do loving deeds now, and the grave will send 
them back, and eternity will echo them forever. Do not forget to 
make home lovely with that radiance which beautifies all beauty — 
the radiance of love. 



ISO 



C EX TEX A R Y THO U GUTS— A PPEXDIX. 



Note F. 

With a view to give permanence to a catholic and discriminating 
testimony, and to wise and brotherly suggestions from an eminent 
divine of a sister communion, I insert here words on our Centennial by 
the Rev. W. J. R. Taylor, of the Reformed (Dutch) Church, published 
in " The Christian Advocate " of June 19, 1884: 

' ' The most attractive point in the centennial review of American 
Methodism is its phenomenal origin, growth, and establishment. 
'What hath God wrought !' 'Who hath despised the day of small 
things ? ' ' The little one ' has become millions ! Its history is a 
modern reproduction of the parable of the mustard-seed and of the 
leaven. It is 'a sign and a wonder,' if not a miracle, among the 
increasing works of Christ in the world. Its providential and spiritual 
character is as distinct and strong as that of any other great religious 
reformation in Christendom. Its nickname has become a name of 
honor, and ' The Pious Club ' of Oxford has risen to power among the 
nations since Whitefield, Wesley, and their fellows took to the fields 
for room ' to preach the Gospel to the poor, ' and Thomas Coke was 
' chimed out ' of his own church at Petherton to become the ' foreign 
minister of Methodism' and its first Bishop in the United States, and 
to find his grave in the Indian Ocean. Contrasting these small begin- 
nings with the statistical representations of the first Centenary of Meth- 
odism throughout the world, its history is tremulous with j)rofoundest 
interest, and challenges the most candid consideration of thoughtful 
people in all other Christian communions. 

What, then, has Methodism Done ? 

' ' ' The tree is known by its fruit. ' Beginning as a personal reaction 
in a few choice spirits against the prevailing formalism and defection 
in doctrine, practice, and experience in the Church of England, and 
against the ungodliness of that skeptical period, the revolt soon be- 
came a revolution, which, like primitive Christianity, first fixed itself 
among the common people, and spread from city to city, and from 
county to county, and then crossed the Atlantic, and reproduced in 
America what it had done in England and Wales. 

The revolution became a reformation, extending beyond its own 



CENTENAR Y TIIO UGHTS— APPENDIX. 



181 



immediate fellowship of believers, preachers, and churches into other 
communions which were leavened by its fermenting Gospel spirit, al- 
though at first, and long after, they seemed to be almost as antagonistic 
as the Jews and Samaritans. 

"At the end of its first century of organized ecclesiastical life 
Methodism in the United States finds itself nearer than ever before to 
all other Christian evangelical denominations in the bonds of the com- 
mon faith, and for the great objects of the kingdom of God. 

1 ' For the progress and success of this vast religious movement, and 
for its commanding importance as a branch of the Church universal, 
the following reasons are self-evident to the student of its work : 

"1. Its undiminished, original, and all-pervading evangelistic spirit. 
It preaches the good tidings of great joy to all people, and esjDecially 
to the poor. It is pre-eminently a preaching Church, after the exam- 
ple of the Great Teacher and of his apostles and evangelists, and the 
persecuted disciples who 'went every-where preaching the word.' 
More than any other Church of the Reformation, Methodism has mul- 
tiplied its preachers, clerical and lay alike; and its witnesses, both 
male and female, have never ceased their testimonies for Christ and 
his Gospel. 

1 ' 2. Its system of Church fellowship, its class-meetings, love-feasts, 
and other social assemblies, have been powerful adjuncts of its preach- 
ing forces. Its brotherhoods and sisterhoods have made strong family 
ties, which, like 'a three-fold cord,' are 'not easily broken.' 

" 3. Methodism has been far less conventional in its habits, and less 
rigid in its ecclesiastical movements, than other and older Protestant 
bodies. The strictness of its ' General Rules ' of Christian life and 
Church fellowship and order, are in perfect harmony with the free 
spirit which has prevailed in its Sabbath and social worship, its class- 
meetings, camp-meetings, and revivals. Whatever errors of excess 
and defect have attended these services, they have kept their hold 
upon the masses of the people whom they at first attracted, and they 
are capable of indefinite modification for improvement and expansion. 

"4. The itinerancy has been the right arm of Methodism the world 
over. No other denomination of Christians in this country has so few 
vacant pulpits, and none has such facilities for putting the right man 
in the right place at the right time. Modify it in whatever way it may 



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CENTEX AR Y THO UGHTS— APPENDIX. 



be wisest and best, the system is an integral part of its history and life. 
The prescience of John Wesley was never more pronounced than in 
his memorable dictum, that ' the day when the itinerancy should cease 
among the ministry and the classes among the laity of Methodism 
would be the day of its downfall.' Other Churches, whose ministries 
have become itinerant in fact, without the order and fitness of that of 
the Methodist Church, might be greatly benefited by some adaptation 
of its etfective system for supplying every church with a suitable 
preacher. 

" 5. Methodism owes its spread and power largely to its general 
superintendency by the Bishops, to whose wisdom, zeal, and power 
the conduct of its immense concerns has been confided with pre- 
eminent success. Personal acquaintance with some of these apostolic 
men who have gone to their reward, and with others still living, has 
filled the writer with profound regard for their consummate executive 
ability, their far-reaching views, their tact and sanctified common- 
sense, and, above all, their pious consecration to the work in which 
they ' gladly spend and are spent ' for Christ's sake. With such lead- 
ers the work of their Church cannot stand still. 

" 6. The connectional objects of the Methodist system of religious 
and benevolent agencies have greatly developed and enlarged its power 
for good. Ranging between the Sunday-schools and theological sem- 
inaries, and from the Tract Society and the great publishing houses 
and the smallest home mission to the foreign work which encircles the 
globe, connecting every church, district, and local conference with the 
various boards and societies and the General Conference, these benefi- 
cent agencies constantly call forth the graces, gifts, and services of all 
the congregations. John Wesley's three principles — 'Justification, 
sanctification, and a penny a week,' ought not to lose their significance 
in the effort to raise the ten or twelve millions of dollars to be laid on 
the centennial altar of thanksgiving. It is a good sign that education 
heads the list of the objects for which the call is made by the cente- 
nary committees of the Churches, North and South. It marks the drift 
of thought and the fundamental relations of a liberal, thorough, and 
large educational system to the progress and prosperity of the entire 
Church. The educational work of Methodism, past, present, and pros- 
pective, is not the least of its great achievements. 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS— APPENDIX. 



183 



" 7. The practicalness of Methodism is another source of its working 
power. With its thoroughly organized polity, and its faculty of adap- 
tation to its environments, it has been true to itself. Aggressive and 
adventurous, courageous and consecrated, popular and progressive, 
'working out its own salvation with fear and trembling,' 'giving dili- 
gence to make its calling aud election sure,' believing in the Lord 
Jesus Christ, and invoking the Holy Ghost, it has continued hitherto. 
Holding its old ground, and making headway against great obstacles, 
it has overcome hosts of prejudices, and now outnumbers every other 
evangelical communion. All this is due largely to the intense, flexi- 
ble, and fertile practicalness of the body and its members, which prob- 
ably originated in the emergencies of its earliest years, and has been 
stimulated and developed by its pioneer service. 

"After this imperfect review of some of the best traits of Method- 
ism, and in the line of the editorial suggestion that ' unqualified com- 
mendation will not be expected, ' a friendly hand may be permitted to 
touch lightly upon a few signs of weakness and disease which its own 
physicians have yet to heal. 

"1. There seems to us who are looking on to be a chronic and 
undue dependence upon emotional excitement, sympathetic impulses, 
and factitious methods of public and social worship, especially in sea- 
sons of revivals, which are followed soon or later by coldness, stolid- 
ity, and collapse. Similar results may attend the most successful and 
lasting religious revivals, which have been characterized by the utmost 
wisdom and care. That they have been more conspicuous in the his- 
tory of Methodism may be due partly to the greater number of these 
periodical movements, but chiefly to the manner in which they have 
been generally conducted. 

"2. The proof of this opinion is in the astonishing disproportion 
between the number of probationers and those of them who afterward 
become full communicants in Methodist churches. One of the most 
experienced presiding elders in the Newark Conference at its last ses- 
sion reported over three thousand additions on probation to the 
churches in his district during his term of service, and no actual 
increase in the aggregate membership in full communion within the 
four yeaus. He accounted for it to several patent causes, such as 
deaths and removals, but more than all to the great amount of ; dead 



184 



C EN TEN A R Y THO UGHTS— APPENDIX. 



wood' in the churches. After reading statistics and discussions on 
this subject in Methodist papers and at preachers' meetings, the ques- 
tions have arisen, Is this grievous fact inherent in the Methodist sys- 
tem ? Is there any organic reason for it ? Can it be cured ? No 
Church is absolute^ pure, but a Church that gathers such multitudes 
into its fold, and that suffers as much as the Methodist Church does 
by the loss of probationers, ought to be able to limit, if it cannot stop, 
this source of defection. Might not the probationary system be 
strengthened, and this evil be shorn of much of its badness, by taking 
the candidates under the watch and care of the Church, but not ad- 
mitting to the Lord's Supper until they shall enter into full com- 
munion ? 

"3. Why does not the Methodist Church keep pace with the 
increase of population, and with some other denominations in our 
large cities ? The facts, are admitted in its own journals, and they 
perplex its leaders. Have costly and splendid church edifices, fine 
music, and other concomitants of popular city churches any thing to 
do with it ? Is Methodism losing its old-fashioned daring and power, 
its humility and success, amid the whirl of the city, the worldliness 
and luxury and the pride of life that have palsied so many other 
Churches ? If this serious problem in the work of Methodism can be 
successfully solved by its wisdom, zeal, and love, all other Churches of 
sister communions will be its debtors. 

' ' Why, again, does Methodism fail to keep its own children and 
youth within its pale ? Dr. Abel Stevens, in his 1 Centenary of Meth- 
odism, ' says the statistics prove that ' most of its converted youth fail 
to enter, or are lost to, its communion.' It is a hopeful sign that this 
problem is also attracting the official attention which it deserves. 
But, after all, are not the true remedies to be found in the homes of 
an instructed people, and in the fidelity of pastors, Sunday-school 
teachers, and other Christian workers in the separate churches ? The 
propagation of the truth as it is in Jesus, and the training of children, 
are the main divinely ordered sources of the strength and progress of 
the Church of Christ. 

" Against these and other weaknesses and faults, some of which are 
constitutional and some are shared with all Christian Churches, Meth- 
odism has a remarkable degree of recuperative energy. Its very diffi- 



CENTENARY THOUGHTS—APPENDIX. 



185 



culties are signs of vitality and growth. Its strength is in God ; its 
weakness is in itself. Its possibilities are in proportion to its numbers 
and resources, its opportunities, and its hidden reserves of spiritual 
power and grace. What may not this great, grand, energetic, power- 
ful Church do for Christ and mankind in the next hundred years ? 

' ' One other suggestion which comes out of this review has grown 
upon me with increasing force. 

"Now, at the beginning of its second century, Methodism has at- 
tained an irenic position, which may be one of the most potent factors 
of its future. The old controversial habit has lost its virus. Its min- 
isters and members pass readily, and in great numbers, into other 
pulpits and pews. Shoulder to shoulder its preachers and leaders 
stand up together against the common foe. In foreign lands its 
missionaries are leagued with those of other Churches, sinking minor 
differences in the unity of the common faith and in the work of evan- 
gelizing the nations. If Calvinism and Arminianism are philosophic- 
ally and theologically opposed, they are essentially one in the funda- 
mental doctrines of salvation by the vicarious sacrifice of the Lord 
Jesus Christ, and the necessity and power of the Holy Spirit in the 
work of grace. Despite theoretical differences, Calvinists and Armin- 
ians cannot resist the divine agencies and the supreme motives which 
are forcing them, by common impulses, to the front in the great con- 
flicts of these latter days which are to bring on the millennium. The 
entire Church of God is in transition to a period of unity, service, and 
power, which will oblige Christians to stop fighting each other, and to 
help each other in the struggles with the powers of darkness. 

"With these prospects, and in this spirit, the apostolic congratula- 
tions spring from the heart to the pen in closing, * All them that are 
with me salute thee. Greet them that love us in the faith. Grace be 
with you all.' Amen." 



Note Gk 
THE OXFOED LEAGUE. 
The Oxford League is a new proposal in connection with the Cen- 
tenary of our Church. It is designed to promote, especially among 
our most intelligent young Church people, the careful study of Meth- 



186 



CENTENAR Y THO TIGHTS — APPENDIX. 



odism ; to discover the harmony between it and the doctrines, spirit, 
and methods of the Apostolic Church, and also to trace the develop- 
ment of the Methodistic force in the Holy Catholic Church from the 
days of the apostles to the present time. 

The Oxford League will associate modern Methodism with the 
Oxford students, who, gathering week after week about the open 
Greek Testament, studied the word in the original, that they might 
more thoroughly enter into its divine thought and spirit. Methodism 
began among the scholars. It reached from the rectory of Epworth, 
from the halls of Christ College, and the parlors of Lady Huntingdon 
down to the lowest stratum of English society. Its work has been a 
work among the masses, and too often our young people have con- 
nected the idea of the Methodistic movement with this department of 
its activity. It is the design of the Oxford League to correct such 
limited views ; to promote an appreciation of the scholarship, strength, 
and dignity of the early Methodist movement; to make our young 
people familiar with the profound philosophy underlying Methodist 
theology, and the wisdom of its practical methods ; to create a greater 
love for the study of the Bible in order to spiritual experience; to 
connect such study and experience with practical work for others ; to 
correct the false notion that, because our Church opposes certain so- 
called social amusements, she is opposed to legitimate and healthful 
recreation; to correct the equally false and injurious idea that Meth- 
odism is adapted only to the lower classes of society, and not equally 
adapted to the most cultivated and refined ; to promote literary and 
scientific training under the auspices of the Church itself, through 
such organizations as the Church Lyceum; and to develop a rational 
and refined parlor life in which the most accomplished people may 
find inspiration, and people of limited opportunities be brought into 
gentle, ennobling, and sanctifying social fellowships. 

All these ends will be furthered through the occasional publication 
of permanent documents devoted to the history, philosophy, doctrines, 
institutions, and achievements of Methodism, especially through the 
Methodist Episcopal Church. 



THE END. 



